


Birds Of A Feather

by GothBoth



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-02
Updated: 2021-02-02
Packaged: 2021-03-13 19:42:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 22
Words: 97,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29159094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GothBoth/pseuds/GothBoth
Summary: I am the hawk and there's blood in my feathers, but time is still turningthey soon will be dry,And all those who see meAnd all those that believe in me,share in the freedom I feel when I fly
Relationships: Matthew Brown/Will Graham, Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 10
Kudos: 17





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic, be gentle.

When he closes his eyes for the last time the night is a ribbon of the blackest blood streaming past him and Hannibal Lecter is a darker void still in the cage of his embrace. He says his goodbyes like all those before him that uttered their silent prayers to the sky above them, then he spreads his arms as if unfurling a cape of wings and the man slips through his fingers like smoke. 

When he opens his eyes again it is too bright to focus, it is too painful to see, it is as if he is looking at the world for the first time. The reek of sea weed and the baron cry of gulls and the push and pull pulse of the ocean around him are an assault on whatever senses of his that survived the fall. 

He feels the lap of liquid salt around him and imagines a puddle of blood so deep that the anchor of his body never touches its bed. All is so lost in those timeless moments, somewhere between life and death on a shore at the mouth of the Atlantic, he feels as if he has slipped into the place where nightmares are made from the fumes of human fear and the dust of broken hearts and he finds it fitting. 

Finally, a part of this place ripples into something recognizable, the gritty breaths of a tide racking over stones giving way to the questioning pant of an animal he knows better than himself. He tries to lift his head from its pillow of quick sand, to grasp at the wet nose thumbing at his palm but his blood is led, his soul weighing heavier than his body. Trying his hardest to see, through the day break of exploding stars he feels in his cheek, behind his eyes and within his chest, the heavy breaths drop away from loud to quiet and the beast in which it comes from stares down at him questioningly, as if will is the thing of mystery in this strange place that he finds himself. For a moment the dog’s fur is a golden hue that sets his memory to free falling, the face of his friend from what felt like years ago since they last walked the fields around their home. 

And then there is screaming, a church bell ringing out so forceful in its alarm it splits itself in two. A woman howling her fear into the morning, the dog joining her, then will, who at last feels at home amongst the tug and tare of his place within a world that has decided to stick to him like after birth. Together they cry. 

Mathew Brown survived prison the way big cats make their way through jungles unharmed. He slipped between the larger inmates like a river of oil that could not be caught or contained, he watched over his surroundings with the same black diamond glint to his eyes that made others waver on his peripheral, more mirage than threat as they dared one another to get close enough to touch. But none ever managed it, even the guards with their meaty grip colder than the bite of hand cuffs never lingered long. Like a hot coal, those who tried to take him into their hand quickly dropped him. Even the inmates who had never had mothers to teach them not to touch the burning stove could glance at him and see the promise of violence, felt in the hairs on their bodies that rose like ghosts from their graves at the very sight of him. 

He survived prison the way he had survived life up until then. Alone. 

Until the day came when a break in the biennial routine of the maximum-security A wing dwellers, such as himself, left him wondering. The other criminals in their washed-out grey slacks with their hallowed faces were shuffled back into their cells, like pensioners being hurried into their coffins by family members all out of love and money. 

Mathew stretched out on the mortuary slab of metal that was his bunk and waited, just like the others, for the silence to break into the meaningful stride of the warden. As the small man in his midnight blue suit came to attention at the entrance of his cell and locked a similar shade of eyes onto his, Mathew unfurled the lean length of himself, ready to waltz into the familiar routine that every convict took to as naturally as breathing. Back to the wall, arms behind his back and a hundred different ideas on how to get within close enough space to the guards to split open their throats wide enough to see their spines. 

‘’Turn around,’’ one of the guards demanded and Matthew, in that moment remembered the first few years of his life sentence when he would twist to face them with a smirk cut into his lips like a scar. As much as he would like to deny the change in his demeanour, the way he could no longer summon the energy to prance and strut, he was all too aware of the way time had eroded him from the sharpest of instruments to the blunt little tool he presented as now. 

‘’Raise them up,’’ the guard waved at him with the end of his baton and Matthew felt his arms reach above his head like they were not his own. As he was patted down, he let his eyes slide over the spongy jugular of the man in uniform then directed his gaze back to the warden who levelled him with a knowing look but remained silent. Finally, the guard, convinced his prisoner stood bereft of weapons took a step back and all three men were left to decipher the others sly flickers of expression. 

‘’Prisoner 230092, do you know what day it is?’’ The warden questioned, statue still in his unspoken assessment of the murderer opposite him. 

‘’Friday the 15th,’’ Matthew drawled,’’ last time I checked we were in September.’’ He raised a slick black eyebrow, some of his smug mockery beneath the surface of his bone deep exhaustion. 

‘’Wrong,’’ The warden raised his own eye brow in amusement and Matthew rolled his eyes so he could briefly asses the emptiness of his bed and the itch of which he wished to return to it, undisturbed as he had been. 

‘’Today is the day you may start to dream of a life beyond the bars of my institution,’’ the man continued, slow and even as if his words meant anything and nothing. Still Matthew caught them, rubber band quick with the snap back of his gaze. Untrusting of most things that were not his own, he let the information sit with him just long enough to feel the raised head of hope and then swiftly cut it from himself with guillotine blade swiftness. He looked for the lie within the wardens left cheek twitch and his hands that grasped at each other behind his back as if he were the one in handcuffs. He found nothing. 

‘’Your parole has been granted by the board,’’ the warden continued by way of explanation,’’ fifth time the charm perhaps,’’ he grew wistful, side eyeing Matthew now in a way that no longer hid his evaluation,’’ they do seem to sway easy to the manipulation of a man that can quote the bible like the lyrics of the latest love song.’’ 

Matthew finds himself in that moment. He is all the things he once thought he was before he was 5 years into his sentence and unable to recall what it felt like to touch another human being without any other reason but to feel. He is the boy born of a good woman with a bad drug habit that one day never returned, he is the teenager running from a home he didn’t belong to with the blood of a family that wasn’t his smeared from his feet to his throat, he is the man that found freedom in tattooed wings and strait jackets, that fell in love and killed to keep it only to find himself caught and caged so that he might never do such things again. He is so hungry that he covers his mouth with his hand as if masking another cocky smile instead of teeth that ace like the fullest of hearts. 

‘’Your release date is in two weeks,’’ 

It is the last thing he hears for the longest time as he lays back on his bunk, the wide knuckled shovel of his hand resting a top his black mop of hair, tugging at it absent minded once in a while as If to remind himself he is in fact still there. The lights go out and the wails of desperate men, the clenched teeth of the lonely masturbates and the uttered hail Mary of the believers fall on his deaf ears like the barest hint of snow. Things he has not felt in years come to him as unbidden as the memories that he once believed had faded, fine and faceless. 

He lets himself think of eye’s the colour of lightning struck sand, the emotions within them a familiar echo of the storm within himself. He hears those long-lost words return to him between the dust mites in the air of his cell. 

‘’I need a favour,’’ Will Graham had asked. 

And Matthew had needed to give it to him, more than he needed the freedom to hunt in the blind spots of the world and bath in the stars that were the dying lights of their sightless eyes. 

Another hospital bed later and Will is thinking about falling into a sleep so deep he never awakens. Before the morphine drip it had been bearable in the way his pain had wrenched from him every pretence of his humanity. He had withered like snakes mating in the desert, screamed his throat bloody and bare until no member of staff in the ER could stand another minute, nor could they understand why he fought as if his life depended on viscous jabs of fist and talon when a doctor in their spotless white coat dared to get near. 

At first Will had welcomed sedation and then, that feeling of something spawning and dying inside of him, over and over, bleeding out just as fast as the nurses could replace it, despite the chemical calm he still screamed silent screams until his brain gave out and his lungs caved in. 

It was while he was passed out that the nurses finally managed to stitch his cheek, wrapping it tightly in a way that left only his one eye able to peer out, still unseeing through thick swabs of white padding and saline solution. His jaw was wound shut with it, as sealed as the stab wound in his chest when Jack Crawford arrived at the foot of his bed like a bad omen. 

‘’Thank you,’’ was all he said for the longest time, brown eyes reflecting unshed tears in a way that made the air stagger in his throat, leaving will retching. 

‘’You got the son of a bitch...and for that..I'm forever in your debt,’’ Jack placed the small object he had been clutching during his brief but heart felt speech on the small bed side table and strode back into the corridor without another word. 

Will stared at the speckled bird of prey feather bunched with fishing wire that made up the tempting bulk of the lure. He can’t remember if he had made this or if it had been Hannibal, out of an old evidence locker or their own houses, likely already swarming with FBI by now. He already knew what he would do with it, turning his back on it and the chair beside it that stood as empty as himself.


	2. Chapter 2

What no one seems to think worth mentioning about such things as love and loss, nature vs nurture is the complete lack of feeling that carries with you the proof of all your failings. Doesn’t the phoenix look biblical with its graceful sweep from the ashes into a flame that burns bright enough to bring its rebirth into a context more vivid than its demise ever could. But what if I told you the phoenix itself could not feel the fire that it walked through, what if I told you that it didn’t even notice that it had risen from the dead. 

Matthew got handed privileges like they were his god given right of late. Moved into lower security his cell spanned wide enough for him to stretch out his arms and not yet feel the chipped plaster of the walls either side of him, his bed made of water proof rubber and foam. He roamed free with the other low risk inmates, most due to be released like himself and stalked the vacant spaces in-between broken pool tables and TVs wrapped in black wire cages until the recreation room closed and they let him roam in the exercise yard. 

He pressed his body into the chain link fence pipped with razor wire barbs, all lethal grace and caressed this last border to the outside world as if it were a lover. The sky was a sulky stain of grey that tasted like rain and it wasn’t until then that he realized how parched all these years had left him. For the wild and unrestrained, Matthew thirsted for the raw elements that created and destroyed even someone like him. He imagined the flavour of all these things combined which took shape behind his eyes as a man made of cherubic curls with the strength to control the very tides in which he chose to drown. 

The bandages unravel in a way so similar to himself that Will barely notices his ability to move more freely again. Sad eyes of the orderlies linger on him as they push hospital food on sanitized trays towards him, only to take them away again untouched hours later. Jack returns and talks to him of what little remains of Hannibal Lecter, all but his memories lost to the sea. He means it to reassure him, to comfort them both but it leaves him a wound without the ability to weep. Still will says nothing and soon patience gives way to an exhausted irritability that contaminates those around him, hearts bent on a victory cheer when he can do little more than sigh. 

This is how Molly finds him, curled in on himself as if to hold the broken pieces of what once was to his chest in hopes that they will be returned to him. 

‘’Are you still my husband?’’ she asks, as fragile as a whisper and if Will had the words, he would tell her of all the ways he never was. Instead, he uncoils long enough to press the fishing lure into her hand and doesn’t really hope she understands. But of course, she does. 

He caught her and her son, made a home out of their simple smiles and easy affection but now that is no place he wishes to return to so in giving her back his hook she feels herself tug loose as the love of her life lets her go. 

Will envies Molly her ability to stamp down on the tears and turn to leave as if that were always an option. He finds himself wishing he were that lucky but instead slips into a dream where he is being pressed to the bottom of a boat that rocks him like a child in the womb. He can’t bring himself to look up into the burning embers of a golden gaze but instead focuses on the hands twisting into the fabric against his chest. Hands that paint him and mould him and murder him, all in the same stroke. 

He wakes up gasping down air that tastes nothing like the breath he stole from the man's lips, bitter that he should be the one left suffocating. 

Matthew has less than a week left inside the stale walls of the penitentiary. In the morning he wakes from dreamless slumber and drags his body through a three hour work out routine that leaves the sweat crystalizing on his skin, glistening like splintered glass between the rivulets of muscle and bone, as he had burnt all the fat from himself by his second year of incarceration. If nothing else he will be leaving stronger than he arrived. 

Staff and other inmates take to the same caseous approach of him, watching him out of the corner of their eyes, as is the habit of nervous animals, never meeting his own for long enough to draw attention to themselves. It makes it easier to keep on the edge of people's awareness until he is almost forgotten. That is how he catches the inmate in the cell next to his own cradling an object emitting an angry vibration as ink seeps like poison from its tip. 

‘’nice gun,’’ Matthew remarks by way of alerting the balding tattoo artist to his presence. The man pales and blanches, a child caught with a toy he could not bear to have taken and it’s all so easy from there. 

‘’It’s the only thing I miss about out there,’ the man gestures to the barred windows,’ my girl smuggled me the ink and the cartridge took months to make, look... Uh..,’ 

‘’Matt,’’ Matthew supplies, one arm crossed against his chest as he leans against the side of the cell door, hand gesturing like that of a board prince trying to encourage continuation. 

‘’Do you wanna tattoo Matt? I'll make it a good one,’’ the man implores, thinking himself quite slippery. Can’t get his fun taken away if the other inmate joins in a little. 

Matthew’s smile is all sharp edges as he makes a show of thinking about it, head rocking from side to side in a performance of debate. 

‘’Sure,’’ he twitches a shoulder, pale skin unable to hide the shift of solid muscle as he slinked further into the cell. The man is a picture of relief, rambling about the designs he can trace with his eyes closed as Matthew plucks the DIY tattoo gun from his black smudged grasp. The inmates smile falters as he straightens up, impress colouring the night of his eyes. 

‘’I’ll give it back when I'm done,’’ Mathew barely glances back on his way to his own cell,’’ our little secret,’’ he throws over his shoulder. 

It has been too long since he felt the drag of a needle bunching and tearing at his flesh till it scarred. Although he had never done this to himself before he had designed the art sprawled across his back, a ripple of black wings and the clean incision marks on either side of his ribs, creating an ink blot effect of ever-changing images on the surface of his lungs. 

In the place between his shoulder and arm, on the ridge of the socket is a perfect round silver moon of a scar from the night he tried to crucify the man that had been Will Grahams betrayer. The skin was translucent there, much like the rest of Matthew when it came to the older man. Pressing the rickety switch on the Pen he begins shading in the obscure shadowy form of a bird that skirts the very edge of the scar tissue. It takes some concentration and re adjusting to engrave another bird into his skin, blocked in with a bone deep blackness that rises from his paleness as if flying through and out of him. This bird is diving down towards the other, caught in one direction for the rest of its days, until it rots clean away from Matthew's breast.


	3. Chapter 3

Will cuts away those closest to him as a butcher would skim the fat of a trim slab of meet. His actions are concise and final, first there is his teaching position and profiling work and all those who know him as either a student of his, a victim of his empathy as they watch on, dead as a summer boardwalk in winter while he replays their last moments, first at the scene of the crime and then over and over in every minute that comes after that. There is Jack and the rest of his team, some of who sent him flowers and get-well cards like grief were simply a fever to be sweated out and flushed from his system with pain killers. 

He still hasn’t said a word since he was recovered from the beach by a young woman walking her grey hound but he writes letters. They instruct his friends to forget him, his bosses and his wife to disown him, his life to leave him. 

What he really wants to say he leaves out but he is sure some people will hear it all the same. 

I want you all to disappear now so I never have to look at you with the same sad eyes that you use to look at me. With regret as every time, I realize you are here and he is not... 

The first thing Will does as he stumbles out of the hospital entrance and into the bite of fall air seeping into winter is amble along a road until he finds a post box. He sends his letters, makes his way onto an all-night bus that will take him far from Baltimore, considers a train to take him even further but by the time he arrives in Shreveport he is as weak and weary as the odd homeless people who skitter past clutching little more than a shredded back pack or a sleeping bag already soaked through. He supposes he is without a home himself now but cannot bring himself to feel despair over this, it hardly seemed to matter where he was, every place was the same to him now, just another space with too much room to breathe. Will could feel Hannibal's absences more than the stitches and the cold and hunger, so bereft of shelter from the only thing he could not escape, he limped into the nearest Motel from the station, tossing his credit card at the front desk like one would lay down an ace in the whole while rattling the plastic pot of pills at his mouth until he felt the tramadol crush between his teeth. 

With only one room left for him to have thanks to a convention in town, Will found himself in the honeymoon suite. As he opened the door, telling himself he didn’t care, the sight of a cliché love nest had him wavering, a leaf on conflicted winds. The heart shaped bed made him want to take a match to the barely tasteful touches of valentine red décor, to sink his jaws into the cushions flecked in glitter, send the rose scented candles soaring into the mirror ceiling until he was dancing in shards sharper than the cheek bones of the man who he had loved and lost. 

Instead, will snatched up the silver flute of Champaign on the dresser, kicking the door shut with the heel of his boot and falling onto the bed with as much grace as a gutted straw doll. When he looked down and did not find pieces of himself strewn around, only a velvet red comforter with the same hue as a ribbon, Will looked up at himself, not surprised at all to come up empty bellow his own reflection. The parts that were missing were no longer his to find, merely remnants of a boy who thought himself a dragon slayer when caught in the eyes of a monster with the skin of a man. He had vanquished them both and realized too late how empty his castle, how thin his forests, how rusted his heart of gold. 

Matthew lay for the longest time with his blood clotting on his chest, prison jumpsuit suctioned to the birds, scabbed and flayed in Indian ink as the lights went out and the last few clangs of doors sliding home sounded throughout the prison. The pain was a soothing hand of the softest skin against his own, a caress that alluded him within dreams and almost all his waking moments. To be touched starved for so longer and then to suddenly feel left him awake and wanton. It was not something he felt in that place where most people pulled from their emotions like the most elegant of magic tricks. Instead, the ache settled in between his thighs and he felt himself turning to a silken stone at the point where his groin met. It had been a while since he had let himself acknowledge the stirrings of want that lay dormant alongside the darkness sleeping in the place where his soul would have been. 

In the blanket of the night Matthew pulled his arms from his uniform and bunched them until it lay twisted around his thighs. In his hand he pulled out his own hardness from his state issued underwear, breath shuddering through the first initial shock of contact. He felt alien to himself, his touch like that of a stranger so he closed eyes that shone deeper than the shadows around him and set his thoughts to sail on the ocean of a memory, far away from the man he had become. 

In his thoughts Matthew stood in another prison, in another time, on a different side of the glass and the steel. He let himself remember Will Graham, so similar to himself back then that he had looked upon the man and known a greater truth than that which had ever looked back at him from the window of a mirror. He had stuttered and shuddered himself straight out of his skin and into Matthews until all the orderly could feel was fever and things that he did not have a name for. It was when he watched Will over Chilton's laptop, hacked and hidden away inside a dark corner of the staff room, watched the way Will had shrugged off his performance as convincing and captivating as it was undignified, that Matthew had dropped all pretense with himself. His smirk dissolved, his muscles went slack and, in that moment, Matthew had been the fish snagged on the beckoning finger of Will Graham’s hook. Not the hawk he had been since before he could walk and talk but a creature of such delicate scales and silk that one sharp tug could have split him down the middle. It is here Matthew's memories tapper off into constructs of heated delusion. Back in his cell he has himself fisted tight enough to stress the veins on his length but he is not there anymore. He is standing before Will, like a blinded man pierced through with a glimpse of vision that buckles his knees at the joints. As he looks up at Will who is now serene and serious with the weight of the world Matthew reaches out and their eyes never waver from the others as Will steps forward, allowing a hand to graze at his stomach before fisting the fabric of his uniform. Matthew is gazing up at him and he is looking down like the killer is an answer to a long-eluded question, landed neatly at his feet. Then the tension within Matthew snaps, the sound of a frozen lake splitting to its core and he is pulling Will down to him, catching his mouth the way he too is caught by the profiler's stare and then he is devouring. Taking greedy mouthfuls of the slight framed man until Will is clutching at his shoulders to keep from falling and Matthew is high on the thrill of holding him steady and still. 

Matthew could double over, so strong is the need to consume and although his hands never shake his world is trembling into landslides that lay him to ruin. For once he is sinfully grateful of the size of his hands, not for how easy they can take life in their grip and extinguish it but for the mouthfuls of Wills body he tried to clutch all at once. Mathew looms tall at his full height as he is pushing Will back by the shoulder and pulling him forward by the thigh, just below the swell of his cheek. 

Something sharp and metalic bursts between his lips and he is driving his tongue forward to chase the taste. So eagerly does Matthew give himself over to the high of the hunt that he does not notice Will’s body fall boneless beneath him, nor the pulse within the neck beneath his fingertips stutter and stop. All that Matthew knows in that moment is the blood, flooding from their mouths and down their jaws to catch in the grooves of their chests. 

Matthew draws back and looks into eyes that are now a listless and lifeless sheen across Wills face and his confusion is washed away by the heart clenching brutality of his own release. 

In his mind Matthew had not shook with the force of it all but back in his cell on his cot his body is lost to vibration, a bow string pulled taught until tearing. He digs his own nails into the bird on his breast and he flies.


	4. Chapter 4

Will roams the floor space of his own private hell as languid as Hannibal when the doctor would run merry rings around him, trailing the blood of hundreds in his wake. His thoughts were still being pulled along by the current of the pain medication and the expensive liquor he has room service bring him every evening. He sits on the white heart shaped chair by the window and cannot tell you what he sees. Perhaps too much and simultaneously not enough though he knows in his fist is a bottle to chase down white tablets that click their way down his throat, the aftertaste is bitter, so much so that compared to it Abigail's ear is almost a glaze of honey across his mind. Everything bares a fuzz around its edges, the world fading at its corners and Will longs to fade with it. 

Somewhere between a dream and a nightmare the timbre accent of Wills inner voice seeps through the cheap armour of hate and rage until it no longer resembles him, but the connotations and tilts of Hannibal's tone. 

Did you intend for us both to be lost to the deep in which you cast us? 

Will wants to real away as much as he wants to crawl closer. 

‘’At least both of us,’’ he answers, struggling under a weight not too dissimilar to that of the trance of hypnosis. 

And when you found yourself, alive yet alone? 

He tried to break away from the sensation head first but found he could not shrug of the daze within his muscles. 

‘’I'm not found though, am I Hannibal?’ Will is cramping with the strain of trying to shake himself awake,’ I'm right where you left me.’’ 

‘’And where is that, Will?’’ 

He can hear a furious rushing of fluid and knows not whether it is the blood in his veins or the cacophony of the Atlantic making its way back to him once more. 

‘’Somewhere in your cold, dead breast.’’ 

‘’Then where am I?’’ Hannibal is almost breathless with curiosity. 

‘’Somewhere within my own.’’ 

Consciousness breaks over Will in a cool wave that both shatters and restores on impact, leaving him pressed against the frosted glass of the window he fell asleep ignoring. His breath is a mist that hints at a warmth he doesn’t feel, singularly his own and yet never enough, Will is sick of it all. 

He yanks up his jeans, as faded and blue as the water mark of his eyes, stamps into his boots and snatches at the duffle bag that contains all that he has left. Will asks a bell hop in his simple black uniform, where he might find the nearest mall and sets of in the direction he is pointed towards. On his way across the promenade, as he’s shortcutting through the rougher area of town to break through onto the south end Will dumps his pain meds in a bin spilling over with take away wrappers and dog waste. 

He does not feel accomplished or brave in spite of himself, no Will can only pinpoint the beginning of an ember that breaths brighter the more it feeds on itself. An anger then that has the power and intent to spill over his control and set ablaze what little of him there is left. 

he does not get side tracked or startled by the clumsily painted Halloween decorations, he does not linger too long on the pretty, brunet girls with their winter print scarfs, he does not stop at all until he has a new cheap smartphone in his pocket and a stack of newspapers that are more adverts than local stories. 

Back in the hotel he lingers in the lounge bar but refuses to meet the sharp glinting eyes of the bottles of whiskey and gin. Will fills his view with properties to rent and job vacancies needed until he has a list of numbers to take with him into that room of hearts, in hopes he does not notice how bottomless his own feels. 

Will does not stop ringing contacts until he finds a cottage to view and an interview at a boat yard not far from the bay. 

Matthew slouches in his seat, rubbing at his wrists, the picture of loose-limbed boredom before the probation officer at her desk. His hands feel light as leaves without the handcuffs but he lets them dangle from his arms braced on either side of him. A guard stands at his back as the tight, blonde haired woman flutters back and forth between the pages of his history. 

‘’You're looking well Mr. Brown,’’ she assesses, ’I imagine freedom suits you.’’ 

He merely lets a grin rise and fall from his mouth, if she had blinked, she would have missed it but she is all wide, pointed looks, from the recommendations of a handful of prison church priests to the unreadable mask of his face. 

‘’Father Cassady tells me your recall of scripture is quite impressive, that and your model behaviour is why you're sitting across from me now,’ she stiffens her spine, an indicative of business,’ I guess I'm wondering if you intend to apply such gifts beyond these stone walls.’’ 

Matthew softens his face between the look he directs from the window back to her,’’ many are the plans in a man's heart but it is the lord's purpose that prevails.’’ 

He watches her slow smile thaw the tension in her frame, all angles seeping into rounded relaxation as his words hit the place inside of her that is still mainly a small-town Baptists daughter, taught to forgive before learning all the ways in which the world could hurt her. Knowing he has hit his mark, a lazy bull's eye thanks to the rosary she hides between her breasts, he allows himself to lounge with her, long legs spread wide as he enjoys the central heating system that toasts her office. 

‘’You’ll have to report to me every Friday upon release and you’ll need a permanent address, although we can help you with that.’’ 

Matthew pretends to think as if this is all new information to his ears then agrees with his usual lip curl,’’ I'd like that.’’ 

As she dives into details of halfway houses and ankle monitors, he tries to recall if it were always this easy, to comfort the vulnerable and afraid like he is one of them. Though he supposes that was how he wound up working in the BSHCI to begin with. A little slump to the back here, a little shuffle to the walk there and all his kind words topped off with the most harmless lisp he could manage. The lisp had been more difficult, as he recalled, at first it had punctuated his speech with the unsettling drawl of a snake. 

But the outcome always seemed to be the same, to accommodate for the intimidating bulk of mass and his tall frame he had curled inward as a spider would when playing at dead. He let his eyes glimmer most the time until he caught the deer-in-the-head-light stares with his own and then all he had to do was think of something sad to dim them more to a stranger’s liking. 

Colour them convinced that there was little more to him than a cheeky charm after that. 

They stifled Matthew with their predictability often enough for him to seek out the isolation that they feared by nature. But that wouldn’t do for a while as he had been found a job at a music store on the outskirts of town, in walking distance of the bed sit that awaited his release. 

‘’And you’ll need to attend therapy of course, at least once a month,’’ the woman throws this at him like the curve ball she means it to be. 

Matthew merely ducks his head, the disciple of understated appease and she beams at him, stamping his release forms with all the vigour of a catholic binding her bible in lace.


	5. Chapter 5

By the time Will has left the hotel room for a two-bedroom thatched roof hide away on the edge of town winter is rattling at the cage of the city like an over excited child. It is as cold and empty in his cottage as it is within his eyes, barely any furniture except for the stove and breakfast table the landlord had assured him he could keep. The windows have fogged and trembled with hard hitting fists of rain since the storm that had moved in with him. Everywhere he goes he now takes the sea and often it is as selfish and unforgiving of everything around him as it had been to himself. 

Will had managed to start work at the boat yard for a day before the weather had forced them all back into the holes they call home. The slick spill of oil and gasoline had eased his lungs the way smoke calmed those of the addicted and at last he had lost himself under the wide belly of a yacht for enough hours to emerge from beneath it, stained and drained but finally able to breath. 

That night he had lit a fire in the red brick hearth, curling around it on the floor to dry himself from his shower and to chase out the cold from his bones. He dreamed of a winter wasteland that spanned more years than he has yet lived. He had tried to build a fire from the ice, to hug warmth back into himself, to keep moving long enough to feel less fright than friction but everywhere he turned had been the same, including himself. Hopeless. Eventually will gave in to the demand to sink into the snow and let it burry him. Though he did not die he waited for so long he might as well have. Before he knew it that place had melted away around him, leaving him back on the wooded floors of his house, haunted by the lone whistle of the wind. 

When he remembers to eat it is from a can, something he had not done since childhood. If he feels the temptress note of longing for alcohol or pain relief, he does not acknowledge it, merely sheers the hair from around his scarred face with hands that jolt and twitch the blade of the razor. He only snags himself once, watching his blood bead and spill down his chin in a way that reminds him of an event that never happened. 

On the weekend he floats down to the beach, past the drunks that stagger their way through the rain like trout through a current and stands at the edge of the waves and as if waiting his return, they reach for him. Will looks out onto the horizon as it appears grim and smoke filled and thinks about how little meaning there is to the world now. In his coat pocket he clutches at the one letter he wrote with nowhere to send it all those months ago in the hospital. He had still barley spoken but his throat remained horse as if every second since their fall from the cliff he had spent screaming. 

It did not feel like being abandoned or left to while away his time on misery. It felt like being turned into sand and churned through an hour glass when once he had been the cradle that had rocked entire oceans into stillness. 

Captured as he is, Will returns home to stare into flame. 

They say those who have spent too much time within the belly of an institution forget how to survive without it bars of plight. Matthew has seen this too before he himself became a prisoner. He would catch the shape of an aimless drifter and read across their face the fear for a world that now felt too big for them since the recent departure from their cage. He had no such problem leaving his own iron incrusted captivity, shaking off the jumpsuit and into the paper-thin shirt and pants they had provided for him, walking beside his jailers with the grace of a man no longer in their chains and through the large gates he had entered almost 7 years ago now. With enough money to catch a bus he pocketed the change and decided to walk away the miles to his new life. No, Matthew took to freedom like all wild things, as if he had never left. 

The one room apartment sat within a block that housed its own kind of constant echoes. Instead of cell doors ringing throughout the dark he heard the bickering of lovers and the wail of their young left filthy and starved in their cribs. He looked long and hard at the drug addict sagged against his door, itching to drive his key into the teenager’s eyes that bared striking resemblance to the hollowness of his own in that moment. 

‘’sorry man,’’ the boy slurred, almost slipping down the wall in his haste to get past. 

Inside was as grey and lifeless as cinder block but Matthew threw himself down on the thread bear sofa as if a man who had just returned home from travelling too long on the road. Mindless of the stains and the wear from all those that had been here before him he grinned. It was as if the emptiness stared into him with a recognition both primal and pensive, welcoming it like an old friend, Matthew closed his eyes and stared back. 

He awoke just in time to take in the richness of the night. Shadowy figures passed him along the roads and alleys that made up the district, black eyes dancing in the stillness of his face Matthew seeped between the distance of the moonlight and the dusk. 

After having stalked the perimeter of his new home, a habit that had not died in custody, he stood at the outer edge of an expanse of littered grass and looked out at the chemical plant down below, vomiting its fumes into the sky. Smiling, he stretched his arms above him, rolling his shoulders until they popped before letting them swing. 

‘’ A guy could get use to this,’’ he sighed in content, pocketing his hands as he strolled. 

The next day he made his way around the clothing store next to the place he had been assigned to work. Matthew pulled fur lined hooded coats and sweat shirts from the racks, washed out black jeans and JC boats in his other hand before sliding them onto the counter. The old man that bagged the items looked straight through him, as he did the same. 

The music shop was barren apart from middle aged loners who eyed stray clusters of pre-teens with a nervous curiosity. 

‘’Sort these records,’’ his manager gestured to a box full of albums on the counter,’’ I'm taking a break. 

Instead Matthew picked up the head set from the try-before-you-buy station and slipped them over his hears. Flicking through each song fast enough to make the sounds run together like the torn off conversation of passengers speeding past in their car, he had forgotten entirely the small comfort the sound gifted him. His eyes crawled closed and his head sank forward as the lyrics in the earphones ran him through. 

Lately I've been afraid of myself  
The closer that I get to rain  
The more I feel at home, the further I'm away  
And all that I feel is pain 

Count me, count me, call my name  
Don't leave me out the chain  
Crimson tears falling and my shirt is blood-stained  
And the devil's forever in my veins 

And the devil's forever in my veins 

The morning is across I've been, when I wake  
Am I asleep? Have I broken my faith?  
Down on my knees, can you hear me when I pray?  
Or am I a little too late? 

Not one to berate himself for the things that he wanted, Matthew only sighed when the image of Will Graham made its way into the structures of his brain like an afterthought, looking startled as if he had just been discovered, as if he weren't on Matthews mind every minute of every day. 

It takes the briefest of moments for our paths in life to change, as it did for him when he lifted his eyes back up and caught the vibrant curls of Freddy Lounds marching her way past the store window. Suddenly the thought of returning to the bedsit he now called his, the staff room where he had hung his bag full of winter clothing, the deepest bowels of hell itself, left him feeling cold. Before Matthew could question the impulse, he was wrenching himself free from the music and taking off after the reporter, his new life forgotten far more quickly than the old one. 

She led him to the scene of a crime, an apartment block already tapped of as the forensics team did their best to avoid her. Unable to get an interview Freddy fell back into the faceless gathering of onlookers, sharp eyes searching for the scent of a suspect. He glided into place beside her and for a while they were two strangers, neither as out of place as the other. 

‘' Ms. Lounds-,’’ Matthew began before she swiftly cut him off. 

‘’I don’t know’’ 

She raised the camera to her face and snapped a picture of the spectacle before turning to him. He raised an eye brow in response, almost impressed. 

‘’I don’t,’’ she insisted, a smirk not unlike his own marring bright bowed lips. 

‘’Don’t what?’’ Matthew challenged. 

Freddy sighed as if put upon before replying,’’ I don’t know where Will Graham is.’’ 

‘’How did you know I was following you?’’ 

‘’Because I follow people for a living,’’ this earned him another condescending eye roll. 

‘’Then why can’t you follow Mr. Graham?’’ Matthew persisted. 

‘’I don’t really feel like dropping of a cliff as of right now,’’ Freddy slipped her camera back into its holder, missing the slight furrow of his dark brows. If she had seen his face, she would have noticed how confusion left him looking boyish, almost vulnerable. He thought, like most things he hid it well but her eyes still widened in surprise at him all the same. 

‘’My god you really don’t know do you.’’ 

‘’Prison gossip was always too limited for my taste,’’ he quipped. This had her full attention, body facing his now, crime scene all but forgotten. 

‘’He took a swan dive into the ocean with Hannibal the Cannibal after killing the Tooth Fairy.’’ 

Matthew knew of Francis as he did most serial killers but he hadn’t recalled Will’s name tangled within conversations of the man. As far as he was concerned Will had been somewhere far enough away, in a house that was pretty enough with a wife that could be described as the same, entirely unavailable to the sanctum of murderers and the monsters he could tame with the mere talent of his mind. Last, he had heard Will had walked away from them all. As it turned out he had in fact jumped. 

‘’He survived, as it happens but who knows where he got to,’’ Freddy scanned the crowed as if she too occasionally caught herself searching for him. 

‘’It seems you have a lot of catching up to do Mr. Brown, now if you don’t mind...’’ 

Matthew catches her upper arm before she can slide past him, thin enough to tempt into snapping and as if sensing this she freezes. 

‘’And what of Will Grahams betrayer/’’ 

‘’Don’t you mean lover?’’ she feels her words enter his heart like a blade, equal parts joy and fascination at his stuttering breath as she shrugs him of. 

‘’They say he drowned.’’ 

With those parting words she shrugs him of and vanishes into the crowd. When he makes it back to the music shop his manager is furious, arms waving about him to elaborate his contempt. 

‘’You just up and left like you own the goddamn place.’’ 

‘’I’m back now,’’ Matthew starts to shuffle through the box of records waiting for him by the till. He wonders if, when Will sank like a stone beneath the waves, he sparred him one last parting thought or if he found himself holding the doctor close to him, in both mind and body, as seemed his habit. He tries to imagine what Wil would have said if Matthew had appeared before him to cushion his descent. 

‘’And who says I want you here.’’ 

He is swinging his eyes back to his boss, body carefully still like the most silent of threats that sound loud enough for those talented at listening. Something in his eyes causes the other man to shrink back, frustration almost forgotten. Matthew can see the moment he decides to let the matter go. 

‘’Don’t let it happen again,’’ the manager tries not to sound meek and fails. 

When Matthew makes his way back to his room that evening, he lingers outside the neon back drop of an internet café before venturing inside. He reads up on every scrap of information he can find about that night on the cliff, where Will emerged victorious from the battle between a dragon and the man who he had loved. He kicks at his ankle monitor beneath the table and tight fit jeans, for once his hard-earned freedom falling short. 

Two letters are waiting for him when he returns home, the probation office detailing the time and place he is to attend therapy and the other a blank note with an address hastily sprawled across it’s middle. Matthew pockets it and falls into a sleep both deep dreamless.


	6. Chapter 6

Wills POV 

Sometimes the practicality of surviving just isn’t enough. Though I can make the hours dissolve into brief seconds at the boat yard and the nights lay way to a sleep sounder than the ones I could ever reach once I'd met you, there is still a part of me that breaks away from this normality I have constructed from your loss. I look for you around corners I do not dare turn, out at oceans I no longer have the strength to cross and in the faces of strangers that still feel more familiar than your own. It is not until I feel my own steady focus turned back on me that I begin to hope. 

It is on a day that reminds me of that night at wolf trap with your knees in the snow and their guns in your face that I feel the heaviness of a presence, to which I am its soul focus. I expect to find a child watching me from the safety of their mothers' arms as they pass me on the street, a dog with me in its steady sights, a person who aims their eyes at me as they float adrift amongst their own thoughts, un aware they are staring. It is none of these things though and even though I keep moving, keep watching, keep going as I have done since the day you died the feeling follows me where ever I am. 

For once when I find myself on the flat beds of the beach that I haunt most Friday's, I do not feel alone and it terrifies me. It is a sensation of something slipping beneath my skin, like that of a needle or of words whispered between the gossamer blanket of night and day. 

By the time I am home I am agitated by it, this unwelcome companion within my solitude. I sit within four walls of stone and it is as if the feeling seeps right through them. It draws me to the windows and pulls my eyes this way and that as I try desperately to hunt down its source. Even after finding nothing but empty streets of snow and instead lying myself down beside the fire, I feel it, behind my eyes and at the peak of my shoulder blades. The week comes and goes. I feel it still. 

The offices are upscale, his psychiatrist's furniture a biennial mix of Mahogany and chrome. The man himself is an interesting blend of physical frailty and emotional solidity. Matthew taps out a rhythm on the arm of his chair, scanning the framed qualifications on the wall opposite. 

‘'So, your integration back into society has been a success,’’ he says this with more optimism than is strictly encouraging. 

‘’More or less,’’ Matthew shrugs, all teeth in his smile bellow absent eyes. 

‘’But you seem to do little more than work and sleep,’’ the man recalls,’’ is this enough for you?’’ 

‘’Don’t forget therapy,’’ he drawls. 

The doctors smile is tight as he nods, ‘’ yes, I find the structure of therapy helps all that seek it.’’ 

‘’I have a friend who would disagree.’’ 

The man jumps on this, ‘’ Your friend you say/ perhaps you could venture to spend more time with this person, to break up the monotony a little.’’ 

Matthews smile it lightbulb bright, ‘’ way ahead of you doc.’’ 

Will is once again close enough to the unhinged grip of madness to feel undone by it. He considers moving towns just to get away from the feeling of being hunted but knows, as sure as the sun will set on the peaks of sails reaching from the Harbour to the sky, that the feeling would most likely move with him. He is past the steely stubbornness that implores him to dig his heels into the ground beneath him, refusing to acknowledge the urge to run. For the first time since the hotel from hell he finds himself stopping in at the corner shop to buy a cheap jug of whiskey. He nurses a tumbler full of the stuff, back against the wall of his fire place until he is too numb to move, too tired to keep alert. 

It is somewhere in the early hours of the morning, still black out that the sound of snow crunching beneath boots slings him from his sleep. 

So, this is it, he thinks, easing from a crouch onto silent feet that lead him to the backdoor of the cottage. If he had a gun, he would have grabbed it but instead has to make do with a rusted carving knife he had found wedged at the back of an empty kitchen draw. Will know it is more for show and shock value as he thinks back on his promise from all those nights ago. 

How would you do it Will? 

With my hands 

He is as still and steady as the moon as he pushes the door open just enough to edge himself around it, facing into the dark. The small expanse of lawn out back is un moving, the streets beyond that deserted. Will’s swallow is an audible click in his throat, his breath a curl of smoke past his lips. 

Everything inside of him is as noiseless as the night. A couple more minute's trickle by as he waits for the attack, the lunge or the sinking of teeth into the sponge of his flesh. When neither of these things happen, he lets free the breath he had been holding, knife slowly lowered to his side. It isn’t until he turns tail back into the warmth of the cottage that a form much taller than his own brings him to a stop as it steps from the shadows as if one of them. 

The dying embers of the fire to their side provides a poor illumination, causing Will to take one step closer to see the man in detail. The fine cuts of his cheeks are familiar, as are the deep-set eyes in the narrow bone structure of his face, much like the features of an owl with the thin-lipped smirk of a predator who found himself victorious in all things deep and deadly. Of which one to class this moment as, Will wasn’t sure but he felt neither fear nor trepidation as the name worked its way out of him, sighed soft as a secret between them. 

‘’Mathew.’’ 

Matthews POV 

Did you know what you looked like to me in that moment Will? Without the BSHCI wrapped around you and the prison suit sagging from your body, so far now from the enemies you called friends and the killers you called family? You looked like the man who I had been made for, the very reason for existence. I looked into the wild world of your eyes and thought of my hands, given to me so that I may hold onto you, my arms fine-tuned with muscle so that I may find strength enough to keep you within them, my barren grave of a heart left empty so that there would always be room for you inside of it. Where once I had looked at you and sore only myself, I now see it all. 

Will’s eyes, barely a sideways flicker to the knife in his hand are no more than transparent pools of water to Matthew. 

‘’Don’t,’’ he says and will doesn’t. 

‘’Why aren’t you still in prison?’’ the older man asks instead, voice barley above a whisper. 

Matthew's smile shrinks some, colouring his lips but leaving his eyes, ‘’early release.’’ 

Will is searching him now as he nods, for a lie or some detail that would give him away as a dream. He finds nothing but the ruinous stare of starless eyes. 

‘’Freedom looks good on you Mr. Graham,’’ his voice is low and achingly young. 

‘’I'm many things Matthew,’ will concedes, tossing the knife at his feet,’ free isn’t one of them.’’ 

With that he brushes past the taller man, their shoulders just shy of touching before scooping low to pick up his empty glass and heading to the kitchen in mind of filling it again. The tension creaks and eases between them as Matthew side eye’s him, reminding Will of the sound of boats expanding as they sink. 

Will returns to his spot on the floor, poking at the cinder of logs with a fire stick as if the other man were nothing but a ghost. 

‘’Can i sit with you?’’ Mathew slinks closer and Will can see the snow melting in his hair and finds himself thinking of coal and ice. He gestures with a sweep of the hand towards the empty space beside him while knocking back harsh bites of the whiskey with his other. 

For the longest time they sit nestled with no more than inches between them, Will with his knees almost pulled up to his chest as he bracketed his arms on top of them, Matthew with the lean length of his legs stretched out in front of him and his spine running flush to the wall. The younger man watched him as he watched the last of the fire ebb and die, universes of space between who they had been when first they had met. 

‘’How did you find me?’’ Will asks as if the thought has only just occurred to him. It softens a part of Matthew that had felt the slightest draft of disappointment at being brushed to one side. 

‘’Freddy Lounds.’’ 

Will blinks away the realization, head dipping in an aborted nod, ‘’did you kill her?’’ 

Matthew’s laugh sounds like a breath being punched out of him, obsidian eyes glowing in their mirth, ‘’No Mr. Graham, that seemed unwise considering this,’’ he pointed to his ankle monitor. For a moment the surprise on the other man’s face colours his eyes in innocence and Matthew wonders at the exact shade of naivety. He likens it to slate. 

‘’You can call me Will, now we’re of equal social standing,’’ his smile is sardonic and Matthews is genuine in return. It reaches neither of the two men’s eyes. 

Neither felt inclined to say much else and as the sky began to shift into dawn Will went with it into sleep, pale lashes fluttering against his cheeks. Before Matthew crept back to the way he had come he pulled the empty glass from the dosing man’s hands, allowing his finger to graze a knuckle that protruded too sharply from skin. 

‘’Goodnight Will,’’ the whisper seemed to linger like a promise in the silence long after he had gone.


	7. Chapter 7

Matthew arrived just in time for work, frozen through and still wearing the same cloths as the night before. His boss held out his pay check like a peace offering which he cashed in his lunch break. With a burger both monstrous in size and grease clutched in one hand he used his other to flip through the pages of a furniture catalogue. Finger landing on the frame of a bed with a finish that reminded him of beach wood, he punched the number into his phone and proceeded to arrange its delivery. 

‘’Can you throw in a mattress with that?’’ he enquired, swiping at his lips with his sleeve. 

Will marvelled at the clearness of the sky, snow still layered on the ground but no longer falling from the clouds as he tightened another bolt on the boat engine at his feet. He expected to feel relief or something close to it having at last discovered why it felt as if he were being constantly watched, instead the image of Matthew at his side left his mouth as dry as his hands. It was enough to set off the distant throb in his head from too much whiskey and not enough sleep. If life had once been simple, he could not remember it so. 

Will tried to summon answers from himself as to the expectation of finding Hannibal, alive and on the steps of his home instead of the man he had used as a weapon to try and kill him. Where he had anticipated a stag and its crown of bone, he had instead found himself toe to toe with another creature, more cutting in eyes and mouth than that of the hawk he had once likened himself too. He spent the rest of that day trying to convince himself in vain that he had not been disappointed. 

A surprise of a different variety waited for Will upon his return home, sweat curling in cold tendrils down his back and dirt caked in the creases of his hands as he eyed the delivery man with his clipboard and flat packed boxes. 

‘’I think you’re mistaken,’’ he bit back a sigh as the man shook his head and tapped at his name on the sheet of paper he proceeded to shove in his face. 

‘’Sign here,’’ 

Alone with the mysterious box, Will set about dragging the package into his living room before shedding it of carboards and bubble wrap. Confusion knotted the space between his eyebrow at the slats of grey wood and metal before he found the instructions. He sank to his knees and spent far too long considering dumping the bed parts out onto the lawn before stealing himself for a shower and a long night of building something he hadn’t even wanted. 

The soft heat of the water that beaded on the bare expanse of his back tempted him to curl up beneath it and sleep where he stood. Suddenly his exhaustion was an unavoidable snare about his body as all his effort threw itself into keeping images of Matthew Brown from the forefront of his mind. Will had thought the young man would opt for a more biblical revenge against him, instead it seemed as if he intended to kill him with kindness. Where he anticipated wrath, he had instead received the barest brush of Matthews presence, as tentative as a boy trying not to burst the soap bubble he had cupped in his hand. There was not one part of this that did not enrage Will, leaving him to prickle within his own agitation. 

It took him half the night to assemble the bed, in nothing but black boxers and a stubborn will to keep going until he could slot the foam mattress into the frame and sink face first into sleep. He had no pillows and only the barest of blankest but still Will sighed in content and comfort. 

Three days passed until Will would run into Matthew again. He stood on the usual desolate expanse of beach, at odds with the emotions that stirred with each white tipped wave. He stared out at the place where sky met sea, lost to time and surroundings as he remembered the scent of Hannibal’s blood that had mingled, hot and heavy with his own. When Will’s eyes once again refocused, the younger man was a smudge of night by his side, black coat and trousers wrapped around the bulk of his body with a boyish grey beany upon his head. His eyes seemed to search the distance with him until turning back to face will, gaze alright but for once his mouth set in a serious line. He seemed to understand the sadness as clearly as if it were his own. Before he could think of the right words to break open the moment Matthew spoke. 

‘’ There's a monastery on the edge of the Romanian city of Bucharest. Like any place of worship, it was built for peace but it became something different in the end. First the Turks attacked it, mistaking it for a fortress, then the people who seek sanctuary there began dying of plague. Most memorable of the many tragedies that happened was that of a young girl who was murdered on the orders of her mother after running away there with the man she loved.’’ 

Will absorbed his words, almost intrigued by the younger man who seemed both thoughtful and amused. 

‘’It lost its bell somewhere along the way but the locals swear they can still hear it chiming from way down at the foot of the mountain.’’ 

Matthew bend to pick up a stone, smooth as glass in his hand. 

‘’The locals don’t dare to go there anymore.... That place reminded me of you.’’ 

At Wills baffled expression he explained, ‘’haunted.’’ 

Matthew flung the pebble out into the water; it sank as quietly and quickly as the man by his side had. 

‘’Maybe I am,’’ Will muttered, turning his back on the young murderer and making his way toward the road. Matthew followed not far behind until he was once again fitted next to him, the only place of late that felt like he belonged there. They walked in silence for a while and encouraged by the fact that Will had not turned him away he said, ‘’one day we should check it out.’’ 

What will thought of this he wasn’t sure, if he was honest with himself, he had yet to summon the energy to think much of anything. Every time he tried; he came up empty as to reasons why Matthew seemed to insist on staying close to him. In the end it seemed easier to ask. 

‘’What do you want Matthew?’’ Will stopped mid stride and turned to him. With the other man stood in front of him the wind could no longer make its way into his body and for a moment there was shelter from the world around them. Matthew’s eyes bore into him, nigresent bleeding into teal. 

‘’I want you to let me in,’’ and if not for the fact that they wavered just shy of Will’s front door he might have been sure what the other meant. 

Another unknown to him was why he stood in his doorway and let Matthew glide past him, flashing a winning smile as he went. 

They spend a second shaking the cold from their skin, Will struggling with the chalk blocks of fire starters, so numb were his fingers. Matthew watched without comment until they stood awkwardly, flame dancing across pale skin. 

‘’Do you like it?’’ He pointed to the bed Will had left exactly where he had put it together, pushed back against the south side of the living room, not far from the fire. 

‘’Do you usually go buying strange men beds?’’ Will evaded his question smoothly. 

The corner of Mathews lips rose in sync with his brow, ‘’only you.’’ 

Despite himself Will almost smirked back before the atmosphere shifted along with his focus and he found himself retreating. 

‘’Well, I don’t have much food and it’s either whiskey or water, the choice is yours.’’ 

Matthew watched him disappear into the kitchen, taking in the detail of the place now it was light enough to see. There was nothing other than a crooked picture on the wall and black out blinds that fringed each window. 

‘’Where's your tv?’’ he called out to Will. 

‘’I don’t have one,’’ he replied on return, pushing a glass of liquor into his hand. He noticed the way the waves in Will’s hair lay flatter against his skull after dragging his jumper over his head, slightly less wind chaffed than he had appeared before. 

‘’Besides, why would you need one when you seem to get so much entertainment out of watching me.’’ 

For a second Matthew thought he had been caught staring. 

‘’That was you following me, wasn’t it?’’ 

‘’A little,’’ Matthew shrugged,’’ but not for entertainment.’’ 

‘’Then Why?’’ 

‘’I guess I wanted to see what you looked like and where you went when you thought you were on your own.’’ 

‘’And now?’’ 

Matthew catches Will’s eye’s, the two of them locked in a moment that felt both feather light and heavy with intent.’ 

‘’Now I can’t help it.’’ 

Will’s face is a mask but beneath it a part of him wilts at the confession. A bigger part is frozen in place, still reliving those last moments on the cliff with Hannibal, each rerun taking with it a piece of his resolve until he is left with yet another chasm to fall from when he tries to envision his future. 

Will POV 

‘’Try harder,’’ I say slow and clear, in hopes the message is one you can understand. 

‘’No,’’ you say, always so unapologetic. And I spend the rest of the night angry at how pretty the fire’s dance on your skin, how at ease you seem when all loose limbed in front of me though you never touch your whiskey, at the bunch of musculature and how it fills out your thrift store cloths so charmingly, at the way my eyes seek you out in the dark. I sit on the edge of the bed you bought me until I am tired of watching you hover near, content with it and announce I am going to sleep, letting myself slouch back until I hit the mattress. You rise to your full height, always so impressive compared to my own and place your full glass beside mine before shucking on your coat and lingering towards the door. Before you go you turn to me and say, ‘’I'm sorry about what happened to you Will.’’ 

I stare you down and reply,’’ no you're not,’’ before curling onto my side as if wounded. 

It is the first time I have reached out for the feel of your own emotions and the lack of them is not a surprise, not really, even if you are a better actor than most. It is the heat of your longing that catches at my breath, so similar to my own before it had been gutted out of me and left to drip dry on the tiles of Hannibal's floor. 

On the hour-long bus ride back to his place Matthew is entranced by a memory of his childhood. His neighbourhood had been dilapidated but regardless of this the other kids still played as if not a care in the world. 

His mother had gone out and had not yet returned, he had quickly grown board of waiting. Wondering aimlessly around the complex of the trailer park he found himself outside the home of a boy he could almost call his friend. He wanted to go up to the little tin door and bid him to come out but the boys pet dog, a snarling and snapping beast that strained on the chain around his neck would not let him near. 

It did not bark, but foamed at the mouth and lunged at him over and over until Matthew grew board of this too. Taking the switch blade from his pocket, a favourite find of his that quickly turned into his most cherished possession, Matthew walked in between the thin legs of the mutt that reached out for him, it’s yellowed teeth just shy of his face. In its desperation to claw the last inch of distance the dog jerked itself forward and the knife slipped into its butter soft heart without a sound. 

Its whine was a devastated one as it collapsed onto the slack of the chain, now coiled like a snake through the puddle of its blood. Matthew’s friend had caught him then, blade still in his hands and the realization of what he had done sent the boy sobbing onto the corpse of his pet as if he were the one weak from blood loss. 

‘’Why, why would you do that?’’ the other child wept, hands trembling within the animal's fur. 

‘’It wouldn’t let me come see you.’’ Matthew replied honestly, a blank slate of calculated calm. The way the other boy had looked at him then, as one might look at the monster that crawled out from beneath their bed, left Matthew with little else to do other than offer the lines he had been rehearsing for some time now. 

‘’I’m sorry.’’ 

‘’No, you’re not,’’ the boy hissed and without much time for thought of what he might do about this, Matthew picked up the dog chain, flecked with crimson and wrapped it around the boy's throat until his tongue grew swollen and his face blue. He left both boy and beast side by side, considering himself merciful.


	8. Chapter 8

Will tried many things to shake of his own guilt after he had shoved his ungratefulness in Matthew’s face with all the grace of a parrot hacking at its own reflection in the mirror with the bluntness of its beak. Where work had once served him well, engrossed in the methodical mechanics of motors and machines, it now barely distracted him. It was as he stood in the frozen food section of his local super market, lingering on the cuts of meat that no longer looked like food to him, that he finally bowed beneath his own self-loathing. He strode back out through automatic doors. Tossing his empty food basket at the cluster of trollies as if they had been the things to anger him so. 

Once back home he rooted through empty draws and cabinets until he found the receipt for the bed and on it the contact number that had been used to make the delivery. He barely used his phone so the number was one of very few already saved to his contacts. The line rang once, twice before Matthew answered, voice still thick with sleep. 

‘’I woke you,’’ it was not a question. 

‘’Will?’’ 

‘’I wanted to thank you since I failed so spectacularly at it the other night.’’ 

He could hear the grin in Matthew's tone, ‘’how did you get this number?’’ 

‘’Not Freddy Lounds,’’ will replied, mirth alight within his own words. It earned him a breathless giggle that had him, not for the first time, taken aback by the youth of the man on the other line. 

‘’It’s my day of,’’ he supplied, something that sounded like the rustle of food wrappers in the background. 

Will sighed, the sound of resolve before he said, ‘’then stop eating junk food and join me for dinner.’’ 

He could not read the silence from the other end of the connection, a pause that left him unblinking, unbreathing. 

‘’You got a time and place in mind?’’ Matthew's voice came to his ear in the clarity of someone who found themselves completely focused, despite trying to sound casual. 

‘’There’s a diner on the Harbour called Pete’s Pallet not far from my place,’’ Will’s eye was on the dregs of whisky in the jug on his counter,’’ how does six sound?’’ 

‘’I’ll be there,’’ Matthew said with all the confidence of a man his age, who had survived years of confinement as if little more than a cumbersome honeymoon. 

Will nodded to no one as the line went dead. 

Matthew stretches, lithe and lean in the slice of winter sun through his window before retiring to the shower. It is under the hot spray of water, hands sliding from the taught and solid pack of stomach muscles that images of Will work their way into his thoughts. He catches his hand slipping lower down his body and stops himself, a distant instinct urging him to keep his hunger. He knew no other way to succeed in the hunt. 

Heaving a silent sigh, he steps out into cold air, selecting a shirt as white as the ground outside his window, as his BSHCI uniform had been when Will had first known him as the strange orderly who had placed each bite shield on his face with a care that had bordered on reverent. He wants Will to remember how they had appeared to one another all those years ago. How in another life and a different light Matthew had orbited him as a moon might drift around the pull of its earth, sometimes whole and other times half formed in shadow. 

Being close to Will involved as much restraint as being away from him. When Matthew had felt the compulsion to reach out and take until there was nothing left of the other man, he had to remind himself to recede. Sometimes all he could do was shake with the strength and constraint it cost him to stay on the edges of Will Grahams existence. 

Matthews POV 

I stand in the mirror and try to envision what you might make of the reflection I cast. The birds at the border of my scar have healed, forever in flight and I know which one I liken to you as it sits directly above my heart as if to guard it. I hope you like the shirt and the close-cut jeans, the smell of cologne that hinders just on the knife edge of sweet, the way I transform the cruel twist of my face into a mask of humanity. In truth, I hope you like me. 

And how dangerous that hope proves as I answer the light tapping at my door, fully expecting to see you in the dim lighting of the entrance. 

My eye’s run over the women, from her chestnut hair to the exotic beauty of her face, all wide brown eyes and thick lashes. 

‘’Sorry to disturb you...i was looking for Leroy,’’ her voice is higher than Mathew had expected, almost cliché in the upper infliction of each word. Very middle America as she pops her gum, her eye’s skittering past me. 

‘’Never heard of him,’’ I drawl, looking down at her as I press my hip into the doorframe and her attention snaps back to me. 

‘'He’s my boyfriend,’’ she explains as if this is supposed to mean something. When she sees that it doesn’t, she continues,’’ he used to live here.’’ 

My lip curls as I make a show of dragging my eyes up the expanse of her legs, ‘’not anymore.’’ 

I know she is preceptive but instead of a hasty retreat she levels me with her own smirk and teases her way closer. 

‘’You’ll do.’’ 

And with that the tiny pressure of her hands is against my chest, which I allow to push me back as she follows the movement by pressing a kiss into the centre of my mouth. 

This woman, whose name I don’t know, would be quite the force if she had the strength to back up the conviction. She too seemed like a creature who understood what it was to want and want and want. It would have been a simple slip of nature to let her continue. I consider it as little fists clench in my shirt and the sigh that leaves her lips mingles softly with my own. But as she breaks away so too does the temptation and I snatch up her wrist in my hand, jerking her off me so sudden that her face disappears into the mess of her hair. She blows it out of her eyes and meets my glare, unfazed by my grip on her. 

‘’Who are you?’’ I rasp. 

The girl’s eyes twinkle from within their cinnamon irises. 

‘’I’m Gloria, I live upstairs.’’ 

I can smell just a hint of what moments before I could taste, the bitter chemical taint of vodka. 

‘’I've seen you around but your always so quick to disappear so i thought I'd introduce myself.’’ 

The woman sounds equal parts proud and bold. 

‘’There is no Leroy is there,’’ I say. 

‘’Not anymore,’’ Gloria grins and I let her slip through my fingers so she can take a step back. 

‘’Look I've got somewhere to be.’’ 

‘’I can wait,’’ are her parting words before she flounces back into the hall. 

‘’Nice to meet you,’’ I mutter distractedly, my thumb swiping at the trace of her still on my lips. 

I worry about the time, taking off into a sprint and relishing the sting of freedom that is the coldest of wind against my skin. 

Will is pacing. Little aborted movement from the door of the diner to the end of its wide expanse of windows overlooking the sea. Each inhale bites into his lungs, such icy gales that make their way from the waters front to redden the tips of his nose and cheeks. 

Will decides he is being ridiculous and shoulders his way into the heat of the restaurant, taking his fill of the empty seats he chooses a table against the window. 

The music is dim in the background so he closes his eyes and focuses on bringing it to the forefront of his mind. 

Drink up baby, stay up all night   
With the things you could do   
You won't but you might   
The potential you'll be that you'll never see 

The promises you'll only make   
Drink up with me now   
And forget all about the pressure of days   
Do what I say and I'll make you okay   
And drive them away   
The images stuck in your head 

People you've been before   
That you don't want around anymore   
That push and shove and won't bend to your will   
I'll keep them still 

Drink up baby, look at the stars   
I'll kiss you again, between the bars   
Where I'm seeing you there with your hands in the air   
Waiting to finally be caught   
Drink up one more time, and I'll make you mine   
Keep you apart, deep in my heart   
Separate from the rest, where I like you the best   
And keep the things you forgot 

People you've been before   
That you don't want around anymore   
That push and shove and won't bend to your will   
I'll keep them still 

When Will opens his eyes, Matthew is sat across from him, having seated himself soundlessly he is staring at him as if stuck in a trance. 

Wills POV 

I should be concerned with the silence of you but I understand it. It is from a time when the night found you more welcoming than the day and the need to watch others became more of a comfort than the need to be seen by them. But I see you now, as I always have. Your paleness bares the slightest flush from the weather, it looks good on you, as does the white of your collar against the midnight of your eyes and hair. 

My smile is a small, fragile thing. I watch as you catch it with your own. 

‘’Sorry I'm late,’’ the excuse dies on your tongue. 

‘’Are you hungry?’’ I croak as if I have not spoken since last, we talked. In truth, I haven’t. 

‘’Starving,’’ you say and you mean it. 

We try the new normality of each other's company on like the finest of robes, as awkward as any two men that had grown up in rags. 

You summon the waitress with the weight of your eyes, her own never leaving you as she takes our orders. 

I pick at the curly fries as you inhale your meat platter and milk shake, your appetite seemingly endless. 

‘’How's work?’’ you ask, your cheek full of food and it is staggering in its ordinality. 

‘’Mindless for the most part.’’ 

‘’Then why do you still do it?’’ 

‘’I’m good at it,’’ I reply as if this is enough. It’s not. 

‘’You're good at re-enacting murders too,’’ you smirk. 

‘’Not mindlessly.’’ 

‘’I’m thinking of quitting the music shop gig myself.’’ 

I nod at this to show I had suspected as much, ‘’what else were you thinking of doing?’’ 

Your eye’s lock with mine, shimmering with the life inside of you like light caught on the expanse of a lake, ‘’something with my hands.’’ 

I try to read you and fail. 

The two of them part ways, Will casting a backwards glance just in time to watch Matthew merge into the wide gaping jaws of the dark. Lying in bed alone, he finds himself casting about his mind for the heavy weight of fatigue that had followed him from the depths of the Atlantic into every moment after it. He comes up empty. By the side of him comes a neon burst of light that cuts across his vision. He stares at the screen of his phone, the message stamped across it in digital text that reads, 

‘Sleep well Will.’’ 

And it is because of Matthew Brown that he knows he will.


	9. Chapter 9

‘’How do you feel about your crimes Matthew?’’ Dr Wolver asks. 

His dark head drops back against his chair as he tosses the question from one end of his mind to the other. The image of Will’s therapist is seared into his thoughts, sacrificial upon his cross with wrists that seep rivers of blood onto his feet. 

‘’Are you remorseful?’’ 

He meets his doctor's eye’s. Thinks, ‘no’ but says, ‘’yes.’’ 

‘’And what is it you regret the most?’’ 

‘’The pain I inflicted,’’ Matthew's reply is instant but as he say’s this it is the image of Will, head of curls too heavy to hold high that he sees. 

They fall into a pattern, Matthew either showing up on Will’s doorstep in time to see him in from work or Will inviting him to a quiet meal at a café near the town centre. Matthew grows on the profiler the way moss burrows so deep into stone the flags are forever dyed emerald. They talk of lonely nights behind prison walls, of monsters and mad men that they had known and in turn become. Matthews laugh, muffled by the mouthful of take-away is now a sound the older man hordes in greedy fistfuls. In turn the tight-lipped smile of will Graham, so close to a grimace is the first and last thing on Matthews mind each day. 

Neither acknowledge what the other does not say. Whether it be about Matthews court ordered therapy or Will’s own therapist that had taken a vital piece of his heart with him on his journey to the grave, both were in silent agreement to pretend as if it didn’t matter. 

With Christmas now day’s away Matthew decided to take a slight detour from his quest to find a good paint for Will’s living room walls. 

‘’Pick up something warm,’’ the older man had instructed, ‘’since you won’t stop going on about all the white around here.’’ 

Matthew had said more than once how it reminded him of hospital wards and solitary confinement. 

He found himself in the outdoor activity shop, grazing over fishing rods and hunting knives. He ended up buying a polished oak tackle box, its little empty compartments padded with black silk and a knife as heavy as a heart in his hand. The cool engraved metal of the handle felt like a gun at the base of his back. 

‘’Not bad,’’ Will commends as he lifts the pot of paint In front of his face to eyeball the colour, ‘’sunset gold.’’ 

‘’I thought orange was a safer bet than red,’’ Matthew teased. The younger man threw Will a paint brush and proceeded to strip down to his t-shirt. 

They each started painting over the egg shell walls on opposite sides of the room to each other, drawing nearer to meeting in the middle as the night went on. The silence echoed back the wet sounding scrape of bristles as if a tongue running against the inner cheek of a mouth. 

The muscles of Matthews arms jump and flex with the effort of his broad strokes as Will, still on the wrong side of slim drowns in the excess folds of his plaid flannel sweater. Occasionally Matthew glances across to Will with the instant tug of a moth to its flame. The warm glow of the ceiling light catches the translucent gleam of the scar across his face. 

Will catches him staring and looks away, then thinking better of it he levels him with the turquoise of his eyes. 

‘’Can I help you?’’ 

He only sounds slightly antagonistic. 

‘’Does it still hurt?’’ Matthew directs his question at the wall in front of him. 

‘’Not in the physical sense,’’ Will mutters, and then after a moment, ‘’what about yours?’’ 

‘’Not anymore.’’ 

‘’You sound disappointed.’’ 

The grin he bites back is wicked, ‘’aren’t you?’’ 

Will goes still beside him, ‘’not with the scar.’’ 

‘’Just with everything else then,’’ Matthew means it as another one of his sardonic jokes but the older man lets his brush drop with an angry thud onto the paint pot lid. He begins rubbings his hands against his jean clad thighs, distractedly trying to clean them of the blotches of gold. His motions are as coiled as the tightest spring as Matthew drops his own brush and turns to him. 

The tension is as thick as the brawn in the younger man's shoulders. 

‘’Why are you here Matthew?’’ Will snaps. 

‘’I thought we were painting,’’ all playfulness has faded from his tone, leaving him still and serious. 

‘’You know what I mean.’’ 

‘’Actually Will, I don’t think I do anymore.’’ 

The profilers laugh is the bitterest of barks before he says, ‘’I didn’t ask you to do any of this, so why do you always look at me like that.’’ 

Matthews eyes are the flat black of a void most would be terrified to get caught in but Will refuses to look away. 

‘’Like what?’’ 

‘’Like I have everything you want,’’ Will snarls, throwing his hands out to his sides in a room that is empty besides the two men and a bed, as if to punctuate exactly how little he had. 

Matthew might be distantly appalled that he is the first to look down and away but as it is, he can only feel the hollowness of his own chest, ‘’why do you do this,’’ his words are a whisper. 

‘’Do what?’’ Will fumes. 

‘’Pretend like you don’t understand,’’ his voice is awash in misery. 

This only seems to in bitter the other man more as he replies, ‘’I'm not pretending.’’ 

At this Matthews anger soars high and bright as he shouts, ‘’you don’t have everything I want. You are everything I want and you know it, you’ve known it all along,’’ his ribs heaves with breath, the furious expanding and shrinking of a cage almost breaking open, Will looking as if the creature who had just escaped from its containment. 

’’ you can fake it as good as the best of them Will, it just pisses you off that I refuse to do the same. You keep wanting to act like you weren't in love with that hack job shrink of yours, that’s fine but I can’t do that.... Not when it comes to you....’’ 

Like an explosion that starts in silence his words trail of into it, the dying of something that had once considered itself unbeatable only to discover it was in fact brittle enough to break. 

Will looks like he has just received a slap he had been waiting for all his life. The clench of his jaw starts to twitch before he turns on the bones of bear feet and leaves, slamming the door behind him. 

Matthews POV 

I am lost in the spaces of your cottage without you so i begin my walk home, only to find I am lost everywhere else as well. I swing from vengefully enraged to a sorrow that seems staggering in its capacity to strip me of my meaning. I reach for answers but come up lacking as I pull the door to my one room apartment shut with a force that rattles the windows. Even though I am inside, hidden from the harsh breath of December air I feel out of place as if I still wander through an ice age of despair. These sensations are new to me and like any fresh born thing they scream themselves raw inside of me. How did people navigate through such things? I think of how I had been strong once before I knew you. 

I am thinking of coals that glow a furious red like the rivers of hell, of teeth like a dagger that slices its way through fat as if it were a feather, of your face shuttering down into a blankness designed to keep me out, when the wrapping of fine boned knuckles on my door strikes like a match against the gasoline of my fury. 

The calm that descends over me is like the coolest slip of water down my throat as I stand opposite Gloria, her pink pyjama set smelling faintly of moth balls. 

Will enters the Red beet tavern in a way the bartender has seen of many other men before him, with the air of a person who had given up the ghost. He drops heavily into a bar stool, a wad of notes already in his hand and pointedly ignoring eye contact he says, ‘’double of Jack.’’ 

The TV on its stand at the corner of the bar is playing reruns of a holiday special and the odd glint of tinsel draped over the juke box and down wooden beams remind him of the glitter in eye’s the shade of onyx. 

Will downs the whiskey like water and orders another. 

‘’Just finished work?’’ the woman behind the bar probes. 

He rolls the sharp aftertaste about his mouth before replying, ‘’something like that.’’ 

‘’You a decorator?’’ 

He is baffled for far longer than he should have been before his eyes drop to where her own are honed in on his shirt, where a bright splatter of paint is crusted across the fabric. 

‘’No,’’ Will shakes his head as if to dismiss the thought,’’ just doing up the house.’’ 

If the bartender finds him difficult it does not show across the neutral mask of her expression. 

‘’It can get pretty stressful can’t it, the whole home renovation thing,’’ she goes to refill his glass as he nods. 

‘’Leave the bottle.’’ 

‘’You look like you’ve just lost a war,’’ Gloria say’s, a cigarette bleeding smoke from the pinch of her delicate fingers. 

‘’I think I have,’’ Matthew mumbled, sounding distant, his eye’s intense yet unfocused. 

‘’You look wounded,’ she replies, flicking the dog end onto the floor,’ will you let me kiss it better this time?’’ 

Matthew takes a meaningful step closer, the remains of her cigarette burning into the sole of his foot and she meets him half way to press her lips to his, ignorant of his pain. 

And then he is dragging her into the cold hole of his flat. 

She twists against him like a ribbon caught in the wind as she mistakes his greedy handfuls of her legs and neck for need. Thinking the giant mask of his hand around her nose and mouth is to stifle the moans that spill out of her, Gloria’s eyes are wide and waiting when aimed at his own. 

And then he is killing her. 

Without air she floods with panic, at first trying to pry him from her face and then batting frantically at his bicep. She bucks and bleats as he stares straight through her until the life leaves her body. He holds her long after her heart had pitched its final beat against his palm and the pallor of her skin had faded from white to grey. 

There is a peace within Matthew as he lets her corpse slip from his arms and if he had ever forgotten he now remembers with a chilling clarity, how taking a life never fails to rejuvenate his own. 

He already knows he cannot display her like the others, though the urge is there. Instead, Matthew tares the cushions from the sofa and taking his knife he slits open the covering until he can see into the gaping hallow of the frame. When he picks her up, she is only fractionally heavier in death and he angles her into the guts of the couch until the last of her purple painted toes disappear. 

He spends the rest of the night, half dragging and half wheeling his only piece of furniture, now a make shift coffin, out the back and down the system of alleys until he stands in the middle of the wasteland of grass overlooking the chemical plant. 

The smell of her will blend right in, he thinks before taking out the lighter he had found in her pocket and setting ablaze the stolen petrol he had doused her in, courtesy of a poorly guarded Toyota. 

There is no effort in any of it. Matthew is sleeping soundly on the makeshift bed of left-over cushions before the sky has chance to turn blinding.


	10. Chapter 10

The next day on his break Matthew calls Will’s mobile but he never answers. He buys a laminator and spends his evening fashioning himself a fake driver's license with the same photo of himself that had once been splashed across newspapers, a skill he had picked up in his teens. He uses it to rent a van that he parks alongside the charred remains of Gloria within the skeleton of the couch. It’s awkward moving what is left into the back of the vehicle and he smears himself with soot and ash but in the end Matthew is successful. He drives out to the fringe of forests before the county lines and dumps his cargo down the face of a ditch that is a mess of up rooted tree’s. He attempts to call Will again on the drive back, ends up speaking to the monotone drone of his voicemail service. 

‘’Mr. Graham I know your angry with me,’’ he begins, ’but you can’t ignore me forever. Out of all the things in this world I can let go of you just aren't one of them...so pick up.’’ 

Wills POV 

I had gotten used to you already; I realize as I throw the line out into the still glass of the water beneath the dock. Every time I turn around, I still expect to find you there, as patient and soundless as you always are. But you don’t understand what it means to wake up in the night to the sound of another's voice in your head, or to look out across the harsh expanse of time and find it landmarked by moments that are no longer your own. Behind my eyes there is a constant real of images. A square knuckled hand that brushes the ragged and bloody mess of my own. The tender, watery smile of a surrogate daughter so much like her father. A catacomb maze of skeletal remains where the whispered words, ‘’i forgive you,’’ echoed reverently amongst the dead. Hannibal’s face so close to mine for the last time as his eye’s reflected back the smile of a boy who had found himself limitless and love sick. 

The weight of it all is crushing me so I ignore your calls in the same way I had ignored his. Perhaps if I refuse you both then living like this would get easier. As you’ve probably guessed by now, it doesn’t. 

I walk up and down the length of the beach, an empty shell among the millions of others. 

The next day as Will is applying a layer of rust proof sealant to the guts of a motor, he is aware of his employer lingering just behind the curve of his shoulder. His sigh is an ancient thing that colours the air like dragon's breath as he turns to him. But Will is surprised to find Mr. Jenkins staring of into one of the many gaping metal work shops that make up the boat yard. The proximity of the greying man suggests he had wanted something from Will but swiftly forgot. 

‘’That boy might be just what this old scrap heap needs,’’ Jenkins say’s eventually, eye’s still cast out into the distance. He looks back in time to see the question in Will’s eyes. 

‘’Hired some fresh blood,’’ he reiterates. 

‘’He any good with a torch flame?’’ Graham pounders, straightening and nudging the splintered metal of a frame with his foot. 

‘’Go see for yourself,’’ the old man grins at him. 

Will follows in the direction his boss had been staring, still in the mouth of the container until said fresh blood is a striking figure in the rubbery one piece, fire retardant gloves and metallic face shield. In his one hand is a soldering gun that spits the sparks back at him as it meets with the slab of metal in his other hand. The ethereal glow of him reminds will of steel workers. 

As if Will had summoned him the man stops his work, the high-pitched screech dying around them. 

‘’I heard your good with that thing,’' is how Will introduces himself, gesturing to the tool in the other man’s grip. His shrug is slight and silent, faceless within the protection of his mask. 

‘’Do you have a minute?’’ 

Once the man empties his hands and pulls the shield away it takes Will a moment to trust that what he sees is not the fabrication of his overworked mind. 

‘’I have a lifetime,’’ the quiet resolution of Matthews words is a direct contrast to the smirk on his lips. 

Will’s face reflects strain before emptying itself of the effort, leaving him expressionless. He thinks about turning tail but finds that he barely has the energy to keep standing. In truth he is tired of running and all out of new escape routes. 

‘’And if I don’t?’’ he asks and it sounds almost fearful. 

‘’I’ll take what I can get.’’ 

Matthew’s eye’s dance with the image of him. They beg Will within their tempting depth. Say yes. Say yes. Say yes. 

The older man jerks his head in a nod and he knows it is as good as an omission of defeat. 

‘’What do you need?’’ He asks and not for the first time Will has no idea where to start. 

They walk back to Will’s at the end of a long shift, covered in motor oil and grit. 

‘’I’ve already let my parole officer know about the change of occupation, I'm supposed to meet with her next month,’’ Matthew explains. 

‘’In the new year,’’ Will replied, as if he is trying to fathom the measure of time. Before the younger man can respond a wild haired woman appears at their side. Her face is a mass of podge and wrinkles, the smell of her reminds him of candied apples. 

‘'Mr. Graham,’ her hand hovers at the height of his shoulder,’ I have your logs out back, the delivery men said you weren’t in so i thought I might store them for you until you returned.’’ 

Will flashes her one of his more genuine smiles, a rare thing to find on his face, ‘’Thank you Mrs. Seagal, I'll come get them before it turns dark.’’ 

‘’Oh nonsense,’ she waves a dismissive hand at him, ‘My John Paul will bring them over in a minute, he could use the exercise.’’ 

Matthew watches the exchange with no small amount of interest, surprised that Will had managed to rub elbows with the Neighbours considering his air of unapproachability, but the old women seemed determined and he liked her almost instantly for it. 

Will waved Matthew through his front door and his eyes were immediately drawn to the half-finished walls of his living room. Noticing this Will pointedly kept quiet as he peels away the dirty layer of his work overalls by the side of the bed, leaving him in nothing more than jeans and a jumper. 

Matthew was in the middle of doing the same when there came a knock at the door. He listened to the low rumble of men’s voices, Will and someone else before the raspy trill of Mrs. Seagal’s voice grew closer. 

‘’My, my, my,’’ she sings from within the door way of the living room, the pale grey of her eye’s jumping from Matthew’s state of undress to the utter emptiness of the place. Their voices echoed inside of it. 

‘’I know,’’ Matthew says in answer to the astonishment on her face. 

‘’But there’s just a bed...’’ she sounds baffled. 

‘’Mr. Graham is a man of simple tastes.’’ 

‘’And what would you know about my preference of taste/’’ Will interrupts, shuffling into the room backwards, arms full of firewood. A tower of a man, more round in frame has hold of the other end of the bundle and together they walk it to the fireplace, dropping it onto the floor. 

‘’This won’t do,’ his neighbour raises her chin at first Will and then her son,’ John Paul, you know what I'm thinking don’t you.’’ 

The boy looks clueless and she presses her lips together as if to will for patience. 

‘’We have a whole storage unit down the bottom of the yard full of furniture we’ll never use again-’’ 

‘’Mrs. Seagal,’ Will cuts her of, ‘that really isn’t-,’’ 

‘’Nonsense,’ she interrupts, ‘I feel as if I've been waiting for this moment, though truth be told how you boys survive I'll never know.’’ 

Matthew is grinning as if in agreement when Will catches his eye, proving to be of equally useless back up. 

It seems as if it is decided from there on out that the four of them would be spending the remainder of the evening walking said furniture from next door into the cottage. 

Much later, as the night descends on them with an all-encompassing blanket of blackness the two men are sat round the fire, Matthew on a double love seat with enough room to sprawl and Will in an aged chesterfield chair. At first the profiler had felt unsettled within it, likening it to something more of Hannibal's’ preference but it was a comfort to his throbbing spine that put him in a mood more forgiving. Their eyes were hypnotized by the long arms of each flame reaching from the wood and curling into soft tendrils of smoke. 

Will had made them both grilled cheese sandwiches and Matthew had spent the entire time suppressing the urge to thank him until he was breathless. He knew Will had reached his peak of tolerance concerning gestures of gratitude by the time they had moved Mrs. Seagal’s bookshelf onto the upper level of the cottage. 

‘’It’s late,’’ the ex-special agent announced softly. 

‘’Yeah, I should probably go,’’ Matthew stretched his arms above his head, the bottom of his shirt riding up until the compact muscles of his stomach peaked from beneath it. Will sharply turned from the sight, rubbing at his eyes as if they ached. 

‘’It’s been snowing all day, the buses will have stopped,’’ Will continued. 

‘’I’ll walk.’’ Mathew said simply, shifting to the edge of his seat. 

‘’You live over 5 miles away.’’ 

‘’Are you asking me to say Will?’’ he was half teasing and deadly in his seriousness. 

Will frowned as if he had yet to think that far ahead before replying, ‘’i think I am...’’ 

Matthew’s grin was all teeth as he slowly reclined back onto the prop of his elbow, sights set on the man opposite him. It was a gesture that beckoned so of course it was no surprise when will rose to his feet and strode straight past him. 

‘’Goodnight,’’ the older man said in the same solemn tone that some would say, ‘i love you.’ 

It continued to snow throughout the night and when both of them awoke in the morning to stand at the windows and look out onto a town that had been engraved in white it felt as if the only warmth left in the world came from the ever near sanctum of their bodies. 

Now that it was too cold to work Matthew added the last touches of paint to the walls while Will disappeared next door to shovel the drive way clear. 

Matthew was never sure about the concept of happiness, it had always appeared so elusive to him but as he watches Will driving a spade into snow that hung thick to his ankles, he thinks that this, in all its rough-edged simplicity, might just be it. 

They venture into the town centre to mooch around the Christmas market and Matthew is as drawn to the scent of frost on Will’s skin as the gathering of small children are to the butter rich pastries. 

He buys a tiny pine tree with red velvet bows twisted around it’s bristles and Will looks at him as if he is only now just able to see the outlines of him. 

‘’Didn’t think you were the type to enjoy this,’’ Will gestures at the seasonal hum of activity. 

‘’In my defence,’ Matthew replies cockily,’ I never tried to.’’ 

That earns him an endearing half smile that sets his heart to stuttering. 

He leaves it on Will’s newly acquired coffee table before taking the opportunity to venture back to his apartment as the snow turns to slush in the heat of the afternoon. 

They agree that the younger man should stay over the cottage during the Christmas weekend and Matthew is so enthralled by the idea of spending that long with the other man that he almost doesn’t notice the old women and small child making their way down the hall towards him. 

‘’Excuse me young man,’ the grandmother jumps at the chance to talk to him, ‘do you live here?’’ 

Matthew nods and waves the keys in his hand as if to prove the point. She looks relieved by this and the little boy merely looks lifeless. It reminds him of someone... 

‘’Sorry to bother you, it’s just I'm the mother of the women that lives up stares and I thought that maybe you might know her?’’ 

‘’Gloria,’’ Matthew states. 

The woman’s smile is short lived, ‘’ yes, well I don’t suppose you’ve seen her around lately...?’’ 

He shakes his head slowly as if trying to think his way out of a riddle, glances at his door to try and hurry the old woman along. 

‘’It was worth a try,’ she sighs, the frame of her glasses is twisted from where she worries at them, the way other’s might bite at their lip, ‘’It’s not unlike her to disappear around this time of year, she always was a bit of a wild child but.... Well, she’s promised to put all of that behind her for the sake of her own child this year,’’ her bony fingers dig into the ridges of the little boy’s shoulders. 

Matthews eye’s drop to his on instinct, the boy that he had all but orphaned. 

‘’I’ll keep my eye out for her,’’ he says, looking away from what could have been another version of himself. He is as carless of the boy as the world was of him but this doesn’t bother him. It never has. 

He throws all the cloths he possesses into a duffle bag with Wills present, wrapped in shiny green paper, on top. 

Wills POV 

On Christmas eve morning, when the sky is a smoke screen of white above me and the ocean is the same meek grey as a pigeon's feather, I say goodbye to you. 

I tell you that although I have hated you, I have also loved you, that although I am always with you, you are without me, that although I too died beside you if I am to live, I must let you go. 

This time as I walk away from the beach it feels as if it is for the last time and the weight that shifts from my shoulders resembles the sudden freedom of being sprung loose from jaws that had meant to guttle me. 

I buy Matthew an old night light projector ingrained in rose wood, for I do not like the image of him in a darkness that it total and without stars. It is wrapped and nestled beneath the miniature tree he bought by the time he is walking through my front door and it is as if he never left. 

‘’For you,’’ he says, skin as white as winter with eyes of black glass and slips a green present next to his own on the table. I am envisioning red riding hood as I take in the crimson of his tank top and the darkness of tracksuit. I see the knife points of the wolfs teeth as he flashes me a smirk before collapsing onto the love seat. 

‘’Take out?’’ I raise my eye brow at him in question and he is reading me the local Chinese take away menu on his phone before I can finish the thought.


	11. Chapter 11

The two of them eat their fill of fried rice and spare ribs, neither talking about how Will avoids the meat. It is technically Christmas by the time Matthew falls asleep curled like a question mark on his side atop the love seat. Will spends a solitary moment just watching him and the way the fire casts it’s demonic glow against his skin before creeping to his bed. He can still see Matthew’s dozing figure in the corner of his eye as he shakes himself free of his jeans and crawls beneath the covers, a rich oxford grey he had picked up from the local flea market. 

As Will waits for the peace of sleep his mind is a scatter of images, like the shuffle of card before they are dealt. He sees Alana and her rosy cheeks in the tiny frame of a small boy, the cold hard stare of Jack Crawford that melts into mildness as it is directed at him, the snake skin silk of Bedelia’s hair and voice as she tries to work around the drug induced slur with her usual grace, the flat moon of Cheyo’s face that never quite managed to act as a beacon in the shadows that had surrounded her. Where once it was an army of the deceased that had haunted Will it is now the dwindling numbers of the living. 

He is considering getting up to go fetch himself another tumbler of whiskey when he feels the empty space on the bed beside him dip and give way to another’s weight. 

Will rolls his head to the side and see’s Matthew, one knee against the mattress by his hip as he lowers the rest of his body onto an elbow in the centre of the pillow by Will’s head. He is hovering over him, faces inches away in the dark with the hitch of their breaths between them. Will raises his hand from the covers to press the flat of his palm against the solid bone and muscle of Matthew’s chest and neither man knows if this is to keep him close or to push him away. 

He can just about see the glint in Matthews eyes as they jump from Will’s own to his lips and back again, a constant flicker so similar to the distant dance of the fire. The younger man presses closer, slow as a growing vine, as if Will would not notice him closing the distance. The weight of him is in Will’s hand for a moment, seeking its relent and he finds the strong off beat thrum of his heart like a searching knock at the door of his own. 

‘’Let me,’’ Matthew whispers onto Wills lips and as the older man’s breath catches like a knot in his throat, he seals their mouths in a kiss. 

Heat flares gradually at their point of connection until it consumes him and Mathew presses closer still, a reach so deep as if in search for the parts of Will hidden behind organ and scar tissue. 

Will feels the slick slide of him as Matthew's nose grazes his own and their eye lashes flutter on the others cheek. 

For an expanse of endlessness there is just this, all that had been both rage and ruin now the feather breath stir of their sighs pressed into each other's mouths. 

And then Matthew's tongue is a molten silk against Will’s own as the entirety of him comes back to life with a defibrillator jolt. The large dish of Matthew’s hands fill themselves with Will’s face and he can feel the trembling of his fine fingers with their effort to keep from clawing. Where their chests heave against each other there is pressure and the swift swipe of Mathew’s groin against his own as he settles between his legs leaves Will breathless. They both break away from each other lips, Will gasping into the darkness to his left and Matthew sinking his face into the curve of his throat, one hand gone from his jaw to lay flat against the bed by his head to brace the brunt of his weight. 

Mathew's recovery is faster and he starts laying open mouthed kissed against the pulse point in Will’s neck, tasting the life there. It is the same as his smell, Matthew realizes, the tannins of a glassier. He feels the heat collect between his hips, hardening him against the ridge of Wills pelvis. 

With a hunger to see him, Matthew pulls back to look down at the flicker of shadow across green eyes, the mess of curls splattered against the pillow and the heady rush of air that Will tries to swallow down past the puckered slash of his cupid bow. 

Will is a wide-eyed whiteness to the wild force of nature that is the man leaning over him. Matthew’s pupils are blown and impossibly black against the sharp features of his face, thin lips parted just enough to draw in the taste of Will on the air. His scent is a mixture of masculine musk and mountain top, ultimately it is the smell of freedom and Will twists Matthew's shirt between his fingers, winning enough leverage to follow him into the space he tries to put between them. 

He feels the erratic tick of muscles in the younger man’s body as he slides their noses against each other, the gap between their lips is barely as their breaths ghost across the tip of tongue and teeth. 

‘’You taste like the ocean,’’ Will’s voice is so quiet it is almost drowned out by the far away implosion of fireworks. 

Matthews thick throated swallow is audible as he lifts his hand to bury it digits deep in the mess of Will’s hair. 

Their next kiss is something holy, a prayer uttered at the altar of their bodies that entwine ever tighter around the other. Will is dazed by it when they part once more, unknowing of the answer to the question in Matthews eyes as his fingers graze the edges of his shirt, requesting his blessing. 

But the younger man is impatient and as his fingertips seep into the flesh of will’s stomach his restraint is dissolved by the acid bath of his desire. Matthews upward stroke, from belly button to knife wound to ribs is the softest caress against Will’s skin as he arches into it. 

Taking advantage of the gap between his back and the mattress, Matthew peels his shirt of him and lets it drop to the floor. Then he is pressing Will back down with a hand splayed at the trench of his collarbone, back bowed like a bridge over the older man beneath him. It seems he can go no longer than a second before he is lifting Will’s lips to his own, stealing away oxygen so that he might last long enough to explore the rest of him. 

Will pushes and pulls at the rim of Matthew’s shirt, his nerves a useless jitter until the other man is tugging it over his head and casting it away with Will’s own. He is a slab of marble cut muscle, ungiving beneath Will’s fingernails but he is a furnace of warmth, so very real to the touch. His eye’s jump over the deep etchings of tattoos until he is leaning up against the brace of his elbow and smoothing his fingers over the design across Matthew's chest. 

His eye’s take in the details that frame his scar, a carbon copy of Wills own. He lingered over one bird and then the other, a look that is all knowing on his face before Matthew swoops down and kisses it away. 

Then the other man’s hands are skimming from the safety of Will’s shoulder to the dagger of his ribs before coming to rest on the band of the boxers against his hip. Matthews large thumbs dip into the elastic and he slides them from Will’s legs, leaving him bare and boneless. Will remembers how he had removed the lace underwear from a woman in much the same way before he is covered again by the press of Mathews body, heavy as heart ache against his own. 

The rigid outline in the younger man's trousers tease at all the things Will does not yet know about him and he finds himself dragging the side of them down from Matthew's hip to his thigh before he runs out of arm length. 

The patch of skin that is revealed and then pressed against his own is as smooth as a stone, seeking more he pulls up his leg until the arch of his foot fits into the curve of Matthew’s waist and he pushes at the joggers so that they shift down the sleek tones of his leg. 

Matthew’s smile as he does this is the sweetest thing Will has ever tasted. His gasp at the sudden contact of their erections is the sound of a man submerged in the coldest of water, causing Matthew to draw back just enough to run his eyes over the other man’s face. This presses his hips home to Will’s own and in the cage of Matthews arms he sings to him the softest of sighs. 

‘’Let me,’’ Matthew groans at the sight of him and it is as if his words are of a forgotten hieroglyph. The bulk of his forearm strains as he lifts himself slightly so that he may reach between them and curl his fingers around Will's length. 

The older man’s head slips back beneath the waves of his arousal, chin jutting into the air as one hand fists the pillows beneath him and the other sinks into the flesh of Mathews arm. 

Will rises and falls with the command of Matthew’s hand, a puppet pulled tense then let loose by its strings. The muscles in his jaw jump as he grits his teeth and swallows down his pleas. Matthew chases the tension along Will's jaw with his nose and lips, his kiss occasionally turning into the briefest of bites. 

When Matthew abruptly releases him to sit back on the heels of his feet Will struggles to blink the spots in his vision away. He sees the other man smear the traces of him over his own length before easing his body back down to Wills so carefully it's as if he thinks the older man might shatter, though his body does rattle like the brittle vibration of glass. 

With one hand still holding himself between them Matthew reaches for his jaw to turn his gaze to him. Will sees himself then in Matthews eyes, the way his own pleaded and implored one thing, over and over and over like a mantra or scripture. 

‘Love me.’ 

Matthew's answer is in the lightest stamp of a kiss as he presses himself into Will, the sponge of his body giving way to the bluntness of Matthews arousal. It sears the older man, like an arrow running him through and his toes curl with it, his cry of anguish is conflicted. 

Then Matthew is smoothing his hand over Will’s ribs and hip as if he can guide the pain up and out of him. His other hand comes up from the cave of their bodies as he steadies himself on either side of Will’s head, trembling as he drags his hips forward one beat of his heart at a time. 

‘’Look at me,’’ Matthew's voice sounds shipwrecked, broken and splintered against the command. When Will unscrews his eyes something else gives inside of him, something primal and primitive in nature that parts the resistance of his body and soul so that Matthew eases the rest of the way into him, a key sliding into its lock. 

It leaches the strength from Matthew like the deepest sleep as he melts into Will, forehead pressed in defeat against the sharp bone of the profiler's shoulder. Will is a band of the tightest fire around him and he tries his hardest to stay still so that he may never have to leave. 

Together they shake apart. 

The first little thrust is to test the limits of the boundaries that remain inside of them, Matthew unsure that they are still two separate beings conjoined and the exquisite drag of friction, the way Will had spluttered as if stabbed before curling his hands around the arena of Matthews skull had been all the encouragement he needed to repeat the motion. 

They rocked together, the pull of the younger man's hips like the press of the tide against Will's core. All he could do for the longest time was hold onto the other man as he built upon the current of sensation inside of them. On one particularly sharp drive of Matthew’s hips a pocket of pleasure burst inside of Will like a grape between his teeth and he began to chase the feeling with his own rolling thrusts. 

Their abdomens pressed and heaved, sweat patching on the skin there as Will parted his thighs farther and Matthew moved into a rhythm of fevered depth until Will lifted his legs to lock at the ankle against the base of Matthews back, thighs a death grip against the younger man's sides. 

Will clenches around him and their pulses become a beat as frantic as the wings of a dying bird. 

‘’Stay,’’ Matthews whispers against the flush of Wills skin, against throat and ear and heart and head. It sounds punched out of him, in a way violence could never affect him. 

Will finds himself repeating back the same words as Matthew when he had been the one to beg of the man. 

Matthew pushes Will’s arms above his head, his hands locking around the jut of the profiler's wrists to pin him in place. He rests their foreheads together, the drag of his hips turning long and deep in a motion that has Will’s body stiffening beneath his. 

‘’Stay,’’ Matthew rasps against his lips. 

Will struggles to find the words as something in his gut begins to unspool and it’s a lot like bleeding out in the end, ‘’let me.’’ 

The ex-prisoner is shuddering then, both his waist and his shoulders as if wracked with sobs and a wet heat leaks into Will almost at the same time as it leaves him, curling into the body around him as if dealt the most fatal blow. 

As if the cord that had bound them finally snaps, they sag against each other, a human disaster of bodily fluid and bated breath. 

Exhaustion hits hard as Matthew presses sated kisses to Will’s lips and eye lids, it’s one of the easiest things he’s ever done when he falls asleep in his arms. 

At some point he is roused by the sensation of Matthew slipping out of him, leaving his thighs a tacky mess before he drifts back into a dreamless vacuum. 

Matthews POV 

A strange ache settles into the heart of me when you fall away from me into the deepest of sleep. I grieve you even though you lay soundly within my grasp. I miss you even though you’re right next to me. Eventually your body pushes me out and I wonder if somewhere inside of your subconscious you feel lonely, if you reach out for me in dreams to pull me back into you. I’ve barely touched another person since my time in prison and I feel as if I have overdosed on the feel of you. In the middle of our encounter when you had shifted to pull my trousers away with your foot, I had almost sunk my teeth straight into the junction between your shoulder and neck, so lost in the rotten sweetness of it all. How you had moved like a serpentine creature against me, how I had fit you as if you were made for me. I knew it would be like this you know; I knew you would be like this. So surely you understand now why I can never let you go. 

Will’s eyes flutter open to the sound of a fresh fire crackling in the hearth and the feeling of his lower body as if he had been split in two. The night is a flicker of snap shots, Matthew above him with the naked grace of a knife as he works Will open only to take him apart. He does not have to look far for the other man who lays beside him, eye’s closed and head cushioned on the bracket of his arms. Though Will is sure he is awake he stares openly at the birds on his chest, the welts of his nail marks are already fading there. 

‘'Do you like them?’’ Matthew asks without opening his eyes. 

‘’I don’t not like them,’’ Will manages with a hint of amusement, voice like gravel. 

Matthew rolls onto his side to face him then, pectoral muscles bunching around the bulge of his triceps. His grin is smug before it falls away to the muted wonder that reflects brightest in his eyes as they take in the sight of him. 

This is the other man at his least guarded, Will realizes, slightly in awe of Matthews devil may care front washed away to reveal a youth both boyish and charming. 

Gently Matthew reaches forward with one hand to rest calloused fingers against the bone of his cheek. Will’s eyes are the only movement to him, volatile in their ever-rotating colours and emotions. Matthew counts them. Fear-hazel, bemusement-amber, arousal-emerald, contentment-teal, trust-jade. 

‘’Can I open my present now?’’ The younger man's smirk is back and Will is silently relieved to see it. 

‘’Can I shower first?’’ He replies and Mathew hums as he stretches, as if considering his answer, his legs thrown over Will’s like the entangled trunks of a forest. 

‘’Alright,’ he relents, ‘I'll make the coffee,’’ and he is bounding out of bed with the type of energy Will can’t ever remember possessing. 

He has to move gingerly to avoid the sharp throb along his backside, dying of at the half way notch of his spine. The discomfort eases a little under the steady press of hot water, all traces of Matthews body washed away from him apart from the grey speckle of fingerprints over the veins on his wrist. 

He towels himself dry, stepping into clean boxers and flannel pyjamas that hang from his body like a sack. 

His coffee is waiting for him on the table by the tree, as is Matthew, topless and cross legged on the love seat. He catches Will’s lingering eyes and grins. 

‘’Put a shirt on would you, you’re making me look bad,’’ the older man huffs, easing himself into his chair as he tries and fails to mask his wince of pain. 

‘’Wouldn’t it make more sense if you took your top of instead?’’ Matthew teases, lounging back in an obvious ploy to flex the muscles in his stomach. Will reaches over to snatch up his present and throw it into the chiselled artwork of his chest as a reply. 

The other man's joy is slightly infectious as Will sips at his mud and watches him peel away the wrapping paper. Matthew's expression changes almost too fast to catch, from confusion to an understanding that softens the intensity of his eyes. 

He takes the projector out of the box, checking that it has batteries before switching it on and sitting it on the table between them. The room, with its curtains still drawn against the brilliant white of the outdoor is dark enough to become illuminated by the rotating spectra of light that casts star shaped patterns and moons across the walls. 

Occasionally a bird soars its way between them and Matthew spends a few minutes watching the way the night sky dances around them in the middle of the day. Eventually his eyes land back on Will and he slouches towards him, the laziest of grace before sinking to his knees before the profiler. 

Matthew takes Will’s empty coffee mug from his hands and presses himself between the man’s legs until he can connect their lips. All of Will’s protests die between them. Then Matthew is reaching into his trousers and pulling his manhood free, already half hard in his hand. 

‘’Shouldn’t I open my present?’’ Will grits between teeth that try to hold in place his gasp. 

‘’It’s a tackle box,’’ Matthew replies before taking him into the cavern of his mouth. The slip of his tongue along the underside of him causes the slight stutter of Wills pelvis as he fights to stop his head rolling back on his neck. But he does not want to miss the way Matthews cheeks hallow around him and the aesthetics of his fingers between tufts of coal coloured hair. 

The quiet suction noises that permeate the air and the way Will’s erection catches at the back of his throat leave him startlingly close. 

‘’Matthew,’’ he warns, voice nothing more than breathe play as he arches into the wet heat of him. 

And then he is spilling down the tight press of the younger man's throat, hand fading from the cupping of his face to clutch at the arm of his chair. 

When Matthew releases him, tucking Will back into the fold of his pants his whole body is shrill in both parts shock and bliss. 

‘’Merry Christmas Mr. Graham,’’ and Matthew's tone is like the velvet of his movements as he places Will’s gift into his lap and disappears upstairs. Will can barely get his finger to cooperate as the steady pulse of the shower turning on above him matches the deafening strobe effect of his blood in his ears. It takes a while for him to unwrap his gift. 

The box is beautiful with wood the colour of shale and padding the same tone as Matthews eyes. He sets it on the table next to the projector light to sit and stare at it until he starts to believe that it is real. 

Wills POV 

You smell like rain and Raddox when you emerge from your shower, like me, I realize and take odd satisfaction in it. You pull me to the bed in nothing but your towel which quickly becomes lost amidst the sheets and our gentle touches. 

‘’I missed you,’’ you whisper into the shade of the room and it is as if I can see straight to the heart of you. How you had clung to the memory of me on every lonely night you were confined to a prison cell. You tell me about all the things you would have said if you had returned to me victorious with the blood of Hannibal on your hands as I taste the ink that marks your body. 

‘’It never seemed important before to be seen or understood until it was you that was doing it...then everything changed, I changed.’’ 

you are not emotional as you say this, merely wistful. 

‘‘You looked right at me like I was the most obvious thing to have graced your presence, even when your mind was on him, I could feel at ease because your eyes were on me. It was then that I decided that I would do whatever you asked of me. Kill for you, live for you,’ you shrug against my lips, ‘what's the difference.’’ 

Then you are holding my skull and you're ravaging my mouth as If the answer lies somewhere inside of me. 

‘’I didn’t notice you,’ I confess,’ not at first and I still don’t understand how blind I was.’’ 

You push me onto my back and loom over me, a sea of mass and muscles that I run my hands over. 

‘’You were tired,’’ you say as if this excuses everything. 

‘’I didn’t think about you,’’ I reply, another omission of sin. 

‘’You didn’t have to,’ you drawl, stroking a curl of hair from my eyes, ‘i never left you Will, not really.’’ 

You worship me with your hands and mouth as you do with your eyes, bottom lip dragging at my nipple, tongue tracing the smile of my scars, a kiss pressed into the v of my groin that leaves both of our breaths hitching, your hands not far behind. You learn me like a sightless man studying a bible of brail. 

‘’You are my first,’’i gasp into the alcove of your neck. 

‘’You are my last,’’ you respond and the beauty of it is devastating. I kiss you as if on the cusp of a goodbye, as if the world burns beneath us and nothing but hell waits for us above, i kiss you like I should have before they pulled us apart and convinced us we were broken. 

I am only aware of the emptiness still inside of me once you begin to fill it. 

Having spent most of the holiday in bed, simply staring at each other as Will had quickly become too sore to do much else Matthew decided it was time for them to venture out. 

‘’Walk with me?’’ he had asked, kissing the tips of Wills fingers as he lay on his stomach, draped over the older man. 

Will had nodded half-heartedly and let himself be dragged from the warmth of body heated sheets. He had just wrestled his jumper over his head when Matthew came up behind him, holding out his coat until he wordlessly slipped his arms through the sleeves. 

They trailed the cobblestone streets of the empty town and although Matthew was curious as to why Will seemed uninterested in wandering towards the ocean, as was his usual habit, he held his tongue. He lets himself dare to think that perhaps it was a sign that Will had decided to leave behind his desolate wandering of the shore and stay with him. 

Once he thinks this, he is sure of it and as if to silently communicate as much he reaches out for the older man's hands, tangling them with his own. 

Will looks down at their point of connection and is reminded of the way their bodies had locked together, ears burning in equal parts heat and cold. As he lifts his eyes to Matthew the man grins wolfishly at him and Will knows that he is thinking exactly the same thing. 

‘’We should get a tv,’’ Mathew says. 

‘’Probably,’’ Will replies and then when he notices the other man still eyeing him expectantly, he says,’’ were you asking for permission?’’ 

‘’Not really.’’ 

‘’Then what?’’ 

‘'I just......really like you,’’ Matthew says with a smile that curls his lip. 

‘’I think I like you too,’’ Will’s voice is barely above a whisper and as soon as he hears his own words, he laughs at them breathlessly. 

Because of course he does and of course they do, it has been the only thing to make sense in the last few years since all of this had started. 

Then Matthew is distracted by something in a store shop window and is pulling Will along to get a closer look.


	12. Chapter 12

Matthew only ever goes back to the small apartment he rents to collect his mail and air out the place before returning back to Will. As the time passes, winter descending into fall, more and more of his newly acquired things accumulate around the cottage as if they had always been there and like Will’s body stretches and breaks open to fit him inside so too does his life. 

The profiler hadn’t considered his house as a home until Matthew’s weights had made a place by the full-length mirror in the spare room upstairs, a little wind-up radio by the side of his press bench. So too could be said for his coat next to Will’s on the hook by the door, his exotic array of reading material next to his own on the book shelf, volumes of tribal legends, DC comics and old testaments, his beer next to Will’s whiskey in the cupboard, the imprint of his body to his left on the bed. 

Sometimes Will is reminded of the decade long age gap between them when they return from the boat yard and Matthew falls in front of the tv, reaching for Will to pull him down onto the sofa absentmindedly as he talks excitedly about the most recent hockey game and Will feels that he is both security blanket and play mate. 

Sometimes he just wants to lay in the silence of the afternoon and listen to the stillness of melting ice but Matthew likes to blast his music as he works out and then wind himself around Will when he finds himself unsure within the peacefulness of it. 

‘’Do you need to have it that loud,’’ Will tries to shout above the noise, frustrated as he braces himself against the door frame of Matthews work out room. 

The younger man shrugs off the weight above his head and then lifts himself from the bench, striking in nothing but a pair of black trunks and fresh sweat. He isn’t even out of breath and Will feels his agitation spike as Matthew picks himself up and snakes towards him. 

‘’What if said yes?’’ the younger man teases, reaching for him. 

‘’Then I'd probably break that radio over your head,’’ Will sidesteps him, heading towards said source of ear-splitting music, death metal no less. 

‘Serial killers,’ he thinks spitefully, as one might say, ‘typical.’ 

Matthew catches his wrist on his second attempt, his quick movements at ease with the solid agility of his strength and not for the first time Will is slightly un nerved by how easily the other man spins him. 

‘’Is that a threat?’’ Matthew sounds delighted, backing him towards the wall behind him as his eyes dance playfully back at him. 

‘’A promise,’’ Will feels his back hit the mirror as it rattles before settling against the brick. 

Matthews eyes burn darker still as his lips graze the other mans, a barely there touch of him. The sticky press of his heated skin against Wills own should feel filthy. 

‘’and what would you promise me if I turned it down?’’ the orderly’s voice is the low gut churning rumble of a flammable seconds after it is ignited. 

Will tries to find his voice and fails before finally he mumbles, ‘’what do you want?’’ 

Mathews clammy hand runs down his arm as his other is braced against the surface of the mirror by the side of Will’s head, trailing back up his body to hold against his face. His thumb runs over the jut of Will’s bottom lip and his eyes rove over the caress as he says, ‘’ promise you’ll never leave me.’’ 

The older man's hands are flat against the mirror either side of him to keep the weakness in his knees from causing his collapse to the floor and like so many of their interactions, what had started off as a game now turns into one of slightly more serious stakes. His anger about the situation alludes him. 

‘’I..,’’ Will trails of and as if chasing his words Matthew leans into him and lightly clamps his teeth on his lip, dragging it back softy before running his tongue over the metallic tang of him. 

‘’Matt,’’ Will warns because so often he finds himself thinking, 

but this is not a game to me, you are not a game. 

And then Matthew is flipping him until Will’s chest is almost pressed to the glass with his breath fogging the image of himself as the other man pushes into his back. 

‘’You're so beautiful,’ the ex-convict almost sounds start stuck. 

‘look at you,’’ 

Matthew stretches an arm down Will’s own until his hand is resting on top of his, against the glass as his other hand reaches around his waist and slips beneath the band of his sweats. He finds Will already hot and heavy in his grip and the older man grunts as he begins to stroke him, thumb pressing over the slit in the head and he groans into the cut of Will’s shoulder blade as fluid pearls beneath the press of him. 

Matthews’s hips drag and Will’s jerk back in response before he can stamp down on the movement. Seeing that Will was too distracted to obey him or perhaps just too stubborn Matthew lets go of his hand to fist in his hair and drag his head back so that their eyes find one another in their reflection. 

Will’s gaze skitters to himself, neck long and blotched with heat like the bones of his cheeks and the flecks of his irises, and Matthew lets him go only long enough so that he can drag both their trousers down over the swell of their backsides. 

Will sees his reflection, watches as he spits onto himself before he feels the blunt push of Matthew’s erection against his entrance and then he swears he catches the sight of a supernova as his eyes roll within their lids. 

His legs with their light dusting of hair tremble as Matthew inches into him and the other man shakes too with the force of his restraint to not drive himself home within the welcoming throb of Wills body. 

Instead of pulling himself back out to set a rhythm that would have them clenching and curving around each other like a giant pulse Matthew stops all movement, fully seated and still. Will squirms as he is speared by him, seeking friction and eyes searching his own black depths desperately in the mirror. 

The thin line of Matthews lips purse with the strain as his brow furrows and jumps but he holds his gaze and breathlessly he whispers, 

‘’promise me.’’ 

Will chokes back a groan, frustration swelling within him like the press of Matthews manhood but as he tries to move back onto him the younger man stops him with the tightening of his grip in Will’s curls. He feels the hot seal of lips across the stubble on his jaw and the side of his head. 

Will raises his hand to touch himself but Matthew suddenly drives them both forward with a sharp thrust, crushing him to the glass. 

‘’Say it,’’ he sounds caught between a demand and a plea, the compact muscles of his abs rubbing against the swell of Wills ass. 

He is eventually losing all resolve when he finally looks back up into the eyes of the man that had pulled him from the darkness of himself and set his mind and heart a blaze with a freedom that resembled the hungry and exhilarating pain of rebirth. 

Will’s spine is an elegant arch at the base above where they are joined as he leans into Matthew's body, 

‘’I promise,’’ he stumbles over the words and then he is gasping as Matthew pulls out to drive back into him with the frenzied force of a man who also knew about the intimacy of drowning. 

His fist slackens around Will’s hair until his palm is flat against his forehead, a protective cushion between bone and glass as his fingers feel out the beat of his pulse in the older man's temple. 

Matthews lips and the words that fall from them are a rush of satin in Will ear, 

‘’Fuck, your perfect.’’ 

And Will has to bite back his moan until it is forced out of him between grunts by the sharp push and pull of the black-eyed man's hips. 

The mirror rattles with the collide of their bodies as they grasp at one another and whatever is near enough to hold onto. 

Then Matthew is spilling into him the secret of his body and just a few seconds later Will is covering the hand that is working him through the electric sensations of his orgasm, the same hands that had taken people apart for him now holding him together. 

‘’Beautiful,’’ He feels the other man mouth against the space behind his ear as he pants through the sluggish race of his blood. 

It is the very first day of spring, ground completely thawed and sprouting weeds and flowers when Jack Crawford shows up at his door. 

Will had taken to sitting at the little desk next to the bed to once again take up his hobby of lure making now that he had a tackle box to fill, and this is when a stern wrapping disturbs him. 

He knows it is not Matthew who barely bothered to knock at all before inviting himself in, even back when they had first started to see each other, because he had left to meet with his parole officer not too long ago. Perhaps his neighbour, he had thought but ultimately, he had been wrong. 

‘’Who died?’’ he cuts across the larger man's polite queries about his wellbeing, hat in hand in hopes it will allow about him a humbler air. And just like that the charade is dropped. 

‘’Middle aged women, just finished defrosting by the look on the decomp, not too far from here,’’ Jack says. 

The hand that Will is using to hold the doorframe tightens before sliding away from it. He feels slightly appeased by the fact that Jack hasn’t attempted to invite himself in. 

‘’But I told you before, I'm done with this Jack,’’ Will’s tone is hard as stone. 

‘’We just need you to have a look, I've had some of the best in the academy look at this but we haven't gotten anywhere. It's been over a week and I'm running out of options, you understand tha-’’ 

‘’What do you know?’’ the profiler cuts through his rambling. 

‘’Female by the name of Gloria Gorella, 31 years of age, disappeared from her hostel in South end at least four months ago. No one has seen her or heard from her until a dog walker found her down a ditch near county lines just over a week ago.’’ 

Will absorbs the information in much the same way he always had, the cop and agent in him drawing connections and discarding theories that didn’t yet fit like a man sieving through the rocks in a river, trying to find gold. 

‘’We know whoever killed her didn’t start with her, the murder was too officiant, there’s no way she was his first.’’ 

The image of Will clutching Matthew close to him as he had whispered the words, ‘you are my first,’ rises like a soup bubble into his consciousness before evaporating, leaving his mind reeling. 

‘’All I ask is that you take a look,’’ Jack replies softly, holding out a contact card between two fat fingers. 

An image of Hannibal’s roller deck comes to him then and Will feels like he has had enough of this already. But he takes the card and he nods to Jack before closing the door behind him and sinking down its solid surface until his tailbone hits the floor. 

He stays there for a while but by the time Matthew is breezing through the door Will is stood at the stove, soup simmering in the pan in front of him. 

Arms as thick as amazon vines wrap around him, muscle bunching and the smell of winter pine that follows the younger man wherever he goes permeates the air around them. 

‘’Smells good,’’ Matthew mumbles into the side of his neck. But Will doesn’t hear him, his mind a thousand miles away along with his stare. 

The younger man is use to this though, has always been excepting that the notion of having all of Will Graham is as unrealistic as ruling the world because there will always be a part of him just out of reach. 

It lies somewhere at the bottom of the ocean and Matthew has fantasies of spending entire summers diving to its depths just to try and find the rest of him. Until then he pressed kisses into the other man’s skins, always on the more worrying side of warm before pulling himself away to go root through the fridge. He grabs himself a beer and pours Will a whiskey, pressing the glass into his hand once taking from it the spoon and shifting him to the side. 

‘’Thanks,’’ Will mutters, blinking away the storm behind his eyes as he looks around him as if marvelling at where he stands. Or the fact that he stands at all. 

Mathew waits patiently for the apology and the nervous smile that follows before the older man gravitates towards him as if magnified, as is the routine on days like these. But neither of those things happen, Instead Will knocks back his drink and retreats into the war within his head, settling into the chair by the fireplace. 

Matthews soldiers on, ‘' so...did you notice anything new about me?’’ 

‘’What?’’ Will sounds dazed as the younger man sits the bowl of soup down In front of him. Confused eyes run over him without seeing much of anything. It is the first time since they met that Will had looked through Matthew as if confronted with a ghost. Something warps pitifully in the darkness of the orderly's chest. 

‘’Now you get to see me naked,’’ Matthew tries on his usual cocky remark and comes up lacking, Will still looked lost within the thread of their conversation. 

‘’They took the ankle monitor of,’’ he tries not to sound disappointed but this was not the way he imagined the scenario playing out. 

‘’Oh,’ Will releases the world with his sigh, ‘right.’’ 

Before he can disappear within himself against Matthew comes to stand in front of him, placing both hands on the arm rests to lean down into Will’s space. 

‘’Do you wanna tell me about it?’’ 

Will eases back as he had once done against the ladder in Hannibal’s office and suddenly the scenes feel parallel. Matthew can see the exact moment the older man loses the argument with himself about keeping something from him. 

‘’Jack Crawford showed up at my door today,’ he begins, watching the others man's face shift into the stoic fixture of unreadability, ‘he wants me to take a look at the body of a women they found not far from here.’’ 

‘’Do you know her?’’ Matthews eyes search his face for a lie and coming up empty as Will shakes his head, he crouches down in front of him. 

‘’What's so special about her?’’ 

‘’It’s not about her, not anymore. It’s about whoever killed her.’’ 

‘’So, they can’t find him on their own,’’ Matthew surmises, trying to ignore the bony caress of jealousy as he watches Will struggle to remain locked onto him instead of the image of a new phantom killer. 

He merely nods, shaking his head of dark curls. 

‘’They want me to find whoever killed Gloria Gorella before more bodies start to pile up-’’ 

Matthew can hear the soothing cinnabar tone of Will’s voice but his worlds are unintelligible as the name he had spoken rolls like thunder through the crystal tumbler of his brain. 

Perhaps he should have put more effort into disposing of her, though to be fair to himself he had always been more of a name and display kind of guy himself. Then he lets himself imagine Will discovering that the person who the FBI are hunting is in fact him, how he would take one last look at him before walking away for good and the distain Matthew can see there, even in his mind is enough to make his stomach twist. 

Will hating him sits like the poisonous bite of a bullet inside of him, he flinches from the thought as if burnt. 

‘’Turn them down,’’ Matthew blurts and Will forgets his words and their weight as he stares at the other man, completely puzzled. 

‘’I haven't made up my mind yet,’’ he frowns up at him. 

Matthew takes his hands and it would have been romantic if he weren't a murderer and a liar, a sinner posed in the mockery of prayer. 

‘’If you help them with just one there will be more, you know it, then they’ll be inviting themselves into your life as if they belong there and they won’t care how difficult they make it for you to just live.’’ 

‘’Matt-’’ 

‘’Just turn them away before they start acting like they own you and-’’ 

‘’Matthew-’’ 

‘’If you stop this before it starts then there won't have to be another Hannibal Lecter-’’ 

Will tares his hands from Matthews and shoves him so hard in the chest the man lands on his ass in front of Will’s brown JC boots. 

There is a pause as one man’s eyes darken and the others shine clear as green glass, now both startlingly present. 

‘’Since when are you so passionate about my involvement with the Bureau?’’ Will says, low and slow as a threat. 

‘’That’s my line,’’ Matthew all but growls. 

‘’It's nothing to do with you.’’ 

‘’One could argue that it’s everything to do with me.’’ 

A spark of fear shadows Will’s expression as understanding dances just within his reach before Matthew rips it away from him again. 

‘’Since it involves you.’’ 

This offends the older man much the same way any form of coerced protection does and he is rising and stalking away from him like he cannot bare the closeness. 

‘’Get over yourself Matt.’’ 

Suddenly his wrist is caught in the vice of the other man's grip as he is spun around and hauled into the wall of his chest. 

‘’Only if you get over me first and since neither of those things are going to happen why don’t you just drop it,’’ he hisses. 

The punch that Will throws at him whips Matthew's jaw to the side, blood swelling over the split in his lip. 

Matthew had released him amidst the shock of it, hand coming up to rub at his face instead. Will is panting in silent fury and Matthew has barely any time to think at all before he is reacting to the sight of it, lunging at the other man and knocking them both to the floor. 

They grunt and growl as they heave against one another, Will is pinned beneath him before it has even set in that they are fighting and Matthew grabs at his arms as the older man thrashes with the contained force of a small typhoon. 

Somewhere behind them he kicks out with his legs in an attempt to dislodge the orderly on top of him. 

‘’Goddamn it Matt, I don’t belong to you-’’ 

‘’No, but you belong with me,’’ Matthew bites out, finally getting control of Will’s fists long enough to dive down and smash their lips together. 

This only makes Will buck harder so he takes the risk of letting go of his hands to grasp his head, allowing the older man to drive heavy punches into the concave of his chest. 

Will manages to tugs his lips free long enough to snap, ‘’then why are you being like this?’’ 

‘’You started it,’’ Matthew heaves with the forces of his racing heart, trapping Will’s mouth with his own again and is encouraged when he feels the outline of the older man's erection against his hip. 

‘’I was fearless before I met you.’’ 

And those uttered words against Will’s adams apple, so similar to his own thoughts before the very first time they had made love crack him open so wide that Will worries not even Matthew will be able to pull him back together. And maybe this is Matthew's fear too, who had been there to witness the mess of him that profiling had made, alone in his cell besides the prying eyes of the criminally insane. 

Matthew is peeling away the layers of his clothing with the same single mindedness as when he had opened his Christmas gift, so forceful that he lifts Will of the floor for a second in his attempt to rid him of his shirt. 

Then his hands and mouth are running wild as horses across his chest, manic with the madness that is his idolization. His breath is steam and his touch is metal within a glove of silk as Matthew tares Will’s jeans down so hard the buttons burst and scatter like rain against the floor. 

He is frantic in his rush to be inside the other man, usually steady hands that now jump and twitch along over sensitive flesh. 

‘’Wait,’’ Will sounds meagre to his own ears, overwhelmed by the man who clutches at him in desperate handfuls, the way his every move against him feels like a goodbye. 

Matthew either doesn’t hear him or doesn’t listen as he pushes Will’s knees up to his chest, exposing the ring of muscle between his thighs. 

‘’Do you remember the extra food?’’ he leans down and gasps against Wills lips. 

The older man nods jerkily as he feels the force of him breaching his body so suddenly it burns. 

‘’The longer shower time?’’ 

Will loses power over his body, can only blink a ‘yes’ as his hands clutch at the mountains of Matthews shoulders. 

The younger man nuzzles his cheek and curls to stretch forward, causing him to nudge the rest of the way into Will’s body that gives to him as if he belonged there. 

Will holds the orderly who now begins to me against him and within him like the darkest yearning of retribution. He flexes and flinches beneath the layer of skin the colour of cream as Will tightens his thighs around his sides. 

‘’The years before the bars-’ Matthew groans, face sinking into Will’s shoulder to eventually glide down his arm and press into his bicep,’ the years behind them.’’ 

‘’It’s nothing-,’ Mathew continues to breath into his body as he rocks against him, ‘-compared to all the things I would do for you.’’ 

He strikes against the liquid heat spooling at the base of Will’s spine, making him bow beautifully, pointed knee’s angled along the sharp wings of Mathews shoulder blades to hold him close. 

And seconds before he is seeping molten fluid between them Will sees a glimpse of himself through the filter of Matthews thoughts 

Because I am the cross and you are the- 

‘’Christ,’’ Matthew swears breathily, his own orgasm ripped from him by the brutal clench of wills body around his own. 

Matthew collapses into him, spent and boneless but still on edge. Will, who has been rendered as still as the eye of a storm cradles him in his arm, gazing down at him as he rests the midnight mess of his head against the shoulder he had whispered his secrets into. 

The older man’s fingers waltz lazily against the scar on Matthew's chin, the one that tastes like a rusted blade until his eyes flutter closed. 

‘’I’m sorry,’’ he speaks against the pads of Wills fingers as if only just remembering the shape and feel of the word, holding it up to inspect in the light of the profiler's eyes. 

‘’I know,’’ Will cards those same fingers through his hair as if trying to press the regret back into the walls of his mind. 

Neither one really knows why. 

Matthews POV 

I fall into sleep pressed against you and the unforgiving wood of the floor and dream of wastelands. We are stood in the desolate remains of a chapel at the ends of the earth somewhere, the only place left that has yet to be consumed by a furnace of the blackest flame. 

You are inching your way from my side across the sagging stone floor that crumbles and gives way in places, oak benches sucked into a gapping darkness that is as total as my own. You are reaching for the deepest of shadow within the fire that surrounds us and as you touch it instead of going up in smoke you begin to freeze. 

Ice solidifies around your nimble fingers and up your arm, making it impossible to pull away. But you never even try and it is this that sends me to my knees. I am roaring your name, howling it but not a sound is made around us. You die as silently as you had lived. 

When I wake up with a jolt it is to the chirp of summer birds come early and the empty place around me where you should have been but aren't. I pick myself up of the floor and hunt for you though I know you are already gone. A note is propped up against the kettle in the kitchen, on it a message in your chicken scratch scrawl that reminds me of the teacher you had once been. 

‘I'll be back soon,’ it reads. 

And I know as I scan your words you are probably in the cold catacomb of a morgue somewhere, fighting to look at the corpse I had left for you like the afterthought of a kiss peppered over your knuckle. 

There is some satisfaction to be had when I realize that bellow the burnt remains and bewitching aftertaste of homicide it is still me that forever pulls at your thoughts, as if I am the whiskey you drink and the fear that you feel long after the memory of me has faded from you. 

For now, I am still the brightest star in the darkest skies of your nightmare. 

Jack has a new team in a new department within the old headquarters of the FBI. The hallways are the same endless maze of grey and the mortuary is as always, a lifeless sea of steel. 

Will ignores the people in the room that still have a pulse until Jack clears it with his usual thundering command and like flies they drop. 

He thuds over to the slab they had all been gathered around like children about the tree on Christmas morning, pulling back the sheet from the body. Will tentatively follows, falling into the old habit of dodging eye contact and finds himself zeroing in on the remains of Gloria Gorella. 

For the most part she is still intact and Will would say a silent prayer if he were the type, so grateful is he to see no hint of a missing organ when scanning the autopsy report. 

But her skin is still blackened, nails and lips charred so badly the bone and teeth that are visible through corroded layers of skin tissue appear white as snow. 

When Will remembers to breath out again it shudders past his lips, rattling out of his throat before he lets himself get pulled into the victim's orbit, circling her where she lies. 

Jack vanishes and so too does the background of the bureau. When he opens his eyes, the darkness appears too thick to see through so he focuses on the women stood in front of him, bronzed and beautiful, her eyes as rich as sun scorched earth as she stares up at him. Her smile teases him forward, arms stretching up to clasp at his shoulders and then Will is pulling her to him, to some place darker still. 

Wills POV 

You feel like lace beneath the callouses on my fingers, your skin gossamer thin unlike the plump swell of your smile as you seal it against my own. 

And then just as quickly you take on the texture of sand slipping through my hands even though I keep my eyes open to the proof of you flush against me. 

Like so many of the others I see you but you don’t see me and it would be insult to injury if it weren't so convenient. 

But you weren't the one that hurt me, you're just the only one I can make suffer for it. You willed yourself into my existence but I am a cruel and unruly God. I am an antichrist of your making. You don’t even get to be the sacrifice so I don’t use a knife. 

I put to you hands I use to make things with and instead I destroy you with them. Where once I had I sparked the flame of a thrill within you I now smother it, my grip over the pout of your mouth becomes crushing. 

You fight it, all wild eyes and fluttering wings but I barely feel your struggle. 

Instead, I feel the surge of power inside of me as it leaves you, I am the lightning rod that illuminates with the pain that runs from my veins and into yours. 

The heady perfume of your fear waters my mouth and the cold, dead place where my heart should be but isn’t. 

I sap you of your life, wring it out of you like blood from a flooded lung and as I let you slip to the ground I am as renewed and rejuvenated as a born-again believer to my own wrath and redemption. I am whole. 

This is my design 

Will lands gracelessly back into his own mind, shaking so violently the metal containers he had rammed his back up against are rattling right along with him. 

‘’What do you see Will?’’ Jack is to the side of him and if his hair wasn’t greyer than brown Will wouldn’t have been able to resist begging him for the time and date. 

He rubs at his eyes instead, almost clawing at them in his attempt to un-see. 

‘’It's a man and you were right, she wasn’t his first,’ Will stammers, the ace that had worked its way into his blood now screaming throughout his body like a war cry, ‘’he’s a loner and murder to him is like water to a plant.... He might stop.... he might not.’’ 

‘’You're telling me he needs to do this,’ Jack's frown splits his face into fracture lines, ‘are we talking sexually, ritualistically-’’ 

Will sighs sharply before vomiting out more of the killer's secrets, 

‘’No, not for any of those reasons, he’s not like the others...he’s careful despite being on the tamer side of 20, he’s skilled in more than just this but especially murder,’ he closes his eyes as if he can block out his own thoughts, ‘he has a hunger that has nothing to do with his more barbaric urges.’’ 

‘’What are you saying Will?’’ 

‘’I’m saying he doesn’t have to do this but he always wants to, at least some part of him,’’ 

‘’And...?’’ 

‘’and it’s easy to forget your alive until death becomes you,’’ Will’s drawls in a voice so dissimilar from his own Jack takes a visible step back. 

The head of the BSU had momentarily forgotten how eerie it felt when the voice of the killer made its ways from the profilers mouth as if the two shared a throat. 

Recovering quickly Jack demands, ‘’how do we catch him?’’ 

‘’Not through forensics,’’ Will is moving towards the exit now, flustered but determined. 

‘’Then how?’’ 

‘’He kills to live Jack but he can fast if he needs to,’ Will shoulders the door open,’ look for a repeat offender, an avid fan of religious sub culture.’’ 

‘’Why religion?’’ Jack calls to him. 

‘’He burnt her, not just to destroy the evidence of his sins but to purge her of her own. Baptism by fire,’’ Will throws back at him before leaving his old friend to the silent company of the corpses. 

Will marched past the small gathering of agents holding their cups of coffee, eyes down cast but still catching the tail end of their words. 

-’’Crawford’s old blood hound-’’ 

‘’-some kind of empathy disorder-’’ 

‘’-took out the Chesapeake ripper-’’ 

He bursts out into the parking lot, cool air splashing over him like water... and still, he cannot shake of the feeling of this killer, the raw energy of his thirst and the familiarity behind the blood lust that raises its head like the rising of a sun, colouring his whole world red. 

Will would have preferred the shot nerves, the painfully tight hypertension of wearing another man's emotions, the sickness that has his stomach heaving and skin palling, anything other than the calm within the ice of his veins that settles him like the beckoning touch of a lover. 

The trip home is a snap shot smudged arounds its edges as Will kicks the door open and without waiting for it to swing shut he make his way through the cottage, eye’s roaming and frantic as he searches. 

He finds Matthew inside the small side garage, work overalls stained in a darkness like moonlit blood as he leans over the engine of Mrs. Seagal’s shogun, trying to seal a crack in the radiator as he had promised he would. 

Will approaches him, silently and swiftly, unfazed when Matthew startles and the iron seal of his hand clamps around his throat before slackening in realization. 

‘’Will,’ the orderly stammers, off guard before the natural spill of a smile shapes his mouth, ‘my bad I didn’t-’’ 

The older man cuts him of by leaning up into him and snatching that grin from his lips with his own. His hands clamp onto the front of Matthew’s slacks, yanking the taller man into him and drawing a surprised muffle of sound from somewhere within his throat. 

There is the loud clang of metal as Matthew drops the wrench in his hand to bury in Will’s hair, eagerly responsive to a touch that promises consumption. 

But Will is the embodiment of sensory overload, the plague that rains down both balls of flame and endless night in a force that cuts Matthew down where he stands. 

He feels uprooted as Will shoves him back onto the work bench, pulling his clothing down to his thighs and climbing up onto his lap with eyes so blank and hungry they mirror Matthews own like two halves of the same moon. 

Will is bigger than his bones in that moment, a thing of shadows and greatness within the thin skin of a mortal man as he jabs his thumbs into the soft spots of Matthews neck. 

His jean clad thighs are either side of his own as he straddles the younger man, nipping at the underside of his jaw. 

Matthew shudders helplessly aroused as Will runs his tongue over the tick of his pulse, nails digging into the profilers back deep enough to puncture. 

He draws back as Will’s fingers scramble to undo the buttons of his own trousers. 

‘’What’s wrong?’’ Matthew is breathless, fingers gently resting bellow his eye socket. 

Will ignores him, knocking his hand away and clutching at the pillars of his shoulders as he hovers over the younger man’s erection. 

As Matthew feels the sensations of Wills body encasing his own, a living glove around the most human part of him, his hands jump to hold the swell of Will’s backside. 

The orderlies' eyes almost drop shut as he hisses at the sensation of the other man sliding down onto him until Will is impaled on the sword edge of his arousal. 

It simultaneously feels like taking to bed a stranger and being ravaged by the man Matthew had spoken to of love and loneliness. 

Will begins to rise and fall on top of him, sinking into an endless rhythm of give and take and Matthew clings to him as if at any moment the profiler might spread hidden wings and try to fly. 

He is gripping Matthew's face like one might cup a puddle of blood, looking as if he is desperate to drink from him and then vomit him back up so that Will might taste him again. 

‘’Fuck you're so tight,’’ Matthew whines into the older man's collarbone before pulling back to watch himself disappearing into the heat of Will’s muscle like the most debauched of magic tricks. 

‘’Come for me,’’ Will croons against his lips and it is all Matthew requires to fall apart, piece by wretched piece within the warm tomb of the man around him. 

Will rides out the apocalypse of his release as if he himself were a horseman heading straight for the end of time. 

When Matthew dips his tongue into the cave of Wills mouth, he is reminded of the taste of revelation. 

Sweat causes the blue dress shirt Will is wearing to cling to his back and chest as Matthew runs his hands over him in pure wonderment. 

He rubs at the hardness between Will’s thighs until he spills over trembling fingers and burrows into the muscle of Matthew’s body as if trying to inch himself beneath the younger man's skin. 

Matthew lifts them both of the work table, thick arms wrapping themselves around the profiler to keep him pressed against him as he blindly elbows the back door of the truck open, collapsing into the back seat. 

They stretch out along cool leather, staring up at the black roof rack as they try to catch their breaths. Will is the first to speak. 

‘’I met Gloria Gorella today....i got so close to her killer for a second it was-it was like I was him.’’ 

Matthew stills at his words, unable to resist voicing his own, 

‘’what did he feel like?’’ 

Will sound far away when he begins to say, ‘’ like the cut you tell yourself will heal just fine but ultimately bleeds you dry.’’ 

Matthew shifts the man in his arms so that he can see the expression on will’s face as he continues. 

‘’walking in his mind was like dancing across a floor of glass and glitter, impossible to navigate without ending up cut....and then it didn’t hurt anymore. 

Without the numbing agent of emotion, I could feel the rest of myself, the song of my blood and the sheep's bleat of her heart beat in my ears before the night around us fell silent by my hand. By my will. I felt like a God of Death, ancient yet no more than a day old. Timeless,’’ 

His face had fallen into endless expression as he described what it had been like to become the man across from him, first dread then the blown pupil glare of sanctimony before finally transforming into a hazy astonishment. 

Matthew found himself in awe of it, of Will. His profile, his mirror of gilded gold the same milky sheen of a soul, where the horror of gutless evil looked almost charming when reflected back within his frame. 

Like how Matthew would look at the black smudge of his reflection in Will’s sea glass eyes and liken himself to art work. 

Before Will could protest the orderly had flipped him beneath the bulk of his body, hands on either side of his head to cage him within his arms. 

Will looked tired but Matthew could no longer summon the energy to be merciful. He kissed him deep enough to taste Will’s sigh, swallowing it whole once turning it into a strained gasp. 

He pulled from him all the silent screams that had collected in the pit of his chest and thought to himself, ‘it’s true, I am always hungry for you.’ 

This time Matthew is slow with him, easing into Will much the same way he pushed the lazy heat of his tongue into the other man's mouth, all urgency evaporating with the steam that mists the truck windows around them. 

Will is boneless, all his borrowed strength sapped so he lies barely moving beneath the Adonis figure of the man on top of him. 

The drag of Matthew’s hips against his own feel like an afterthought, the closeness of each other as complete and total as the fate of a self-combusting star. 

Matthew seals his hand over Will’s eye’s and buries his face into the bridge of the older man’s shoulder, a silent command to be blind with him, to see nothing but feel everything. 

‘’You must know by now,’’ Matthew mumbles to himself, feeling the pressure of the body ebbing around him. 

Will reaches up to weakly clasp at his neck with one hand, ‘’ know what?’’ 

Both of their eyes are scrunched shut against the rising onslaught of another orgasm, the words free flowing from Matthew’s lips just before it takes him, 

‘’all that’s left of me is you.’’ 

And then Will is catapulted back into his sense of self so quickly he feels whiplashed. Matthew had driven him back into his body with the force of his own, returned him from a land of honey as sticky as life blood and milk as thick as entrails. 

From the barren desert of a killer’s heart. 

What Will never tells anyone is the way his emotions had felt like the reincarnation of something he had once felt before, the echoing sensation of DeJa'Vu.


	13. Chapter 13

Matthews POV 

I fix the truck but find I cannot take my eyes away from it, from the back seat where you have whispered to me my own words that had never been given life outside the arena of my head until you had taken them from me and made them your own. 

The memory still has me entranced so when Mrs. Seagal comes around to survey the good work I already know exactly how I will proposition her. Like me, she also has a soft spot for you. 

‘’Wonderful,’ she gushes when I turn the key in the ignition and the truck thunders to life, ‘clever boy, my grandson will be so happy.’’ 

‘’Is it a gift for him?’’ I ask. 

‘’That was the plan, though I do worry about him in something as big as this...Still the man who sold it to me promised me that any man would be delighted with it.’’ 

‘’I believe him, I know Will was thinking of getting one...’’ I say innocently, eyes lingering on the truck. 

‘’You don’t say,’’ Mrs. Seagal exclaims. 

‘’I was going to ask you for a price but.... never mind,’’ I beam at her, my smile curving my face in a way you had once told me was charming. 

The old women looked thoughtful and I mentally pump my fist into the air, victorious. 

‘’Well... I suppose we could work something out,’’ she nods to herself slowly. 

‘’I thought it might help you actually,’ I shrug, ‘you let me take this big old thing off your hands and then you can use the money to buy your grandson something a little safer...’’ 

‘’You know what?’ she grins at me, ‘i think you may have yourself a deal.’’ 

‘’Really?’’ I sound young to my own ears, my excitement genuine, ‘we’d take good care of it and I mean, Will would love it.’’ 

In the end it is this that convinces the old bat to gift it to me so that I may give it to you. I drive it into town to draw out the money for it, my eye’s dancing in the rear-view mirror where I can see the place I had taken you and you had taken me, skin suctioned to leather and the slick of each other's sweat. 

Later that evening when you get in from the boat yard, I toss the keys at your head and marvel at the way you snatch them from the air before they can hit you. 

‘’What’s this?’’ you scrunch your nose at them as they dangle from your fingers. I go to you and draw you into my arms until my lips meet your ear. 

‘’A gift,’’ I drawl, intoxicated off the smell of you. 

‘’The truck?’’ your eyebrow shoots up into the forest of your curls. They hang wild and unruly just above your shoulders now and though i always mean to tell you how much I love the look on you I never do. 

You read me as easily as you always have then, eye’s jumping to mine as they glisten with amusement. 

‘’You bought a whole truck just to keep the back seats.’’ 

My hand closes around yours and the keys as I nod roguishly. 

You shake your head in disbelief but your smirk is growing as quick as my own. 

‘’You're crazy,’’ you say. 

‘’Well,’ I pull the jacket from your body and hang it on the hook by the door,’ I was in a mental institution once.’’ 

You raise your eye brow at me and I snicker. 

‘’Ok, maybe a few times,’ I stalk after you as you head upstairs, always so eager to wash the dirt from your body after a long shift. 

‘’Do you think I caught it from one of the inpatients?’’ I tease, shoulder resting against the frame of the bathroom door. 

You throw me a glare over your shoulder as you begin to shed your clothing and my breath catches in my throat at the sight of you. 

Even after all these months i am still ensnared by the narrow curve of your waste and the tawdry definition of your muscles. Your shoulder blades shift like wings beneath your skin as you shuck of your vest and disappear behind the frosted glass of the shower. 

Only then do I come back to my senses as if released from a lucid dream. I draw the crooked outline of a heart in the steam on the mirror and then begin shrugging out of my own cloths, slotting into place behind you as I horde to myself all the water so that you have to move closer to me still just to get clean again. 

Before I was in love with the idea of you, of all the possibilities of you but now I am in love with the reality of you. 

It makes the affection I had for you before feel like a cheap, synthetic drug compared to how i feel about you now. Some days it is all I can do not to rip out our hearts and swap them so that yours will always beat in my chest and mine will always be in yours. It would be the most honest thing I have ever done. 

‘’I applied for a teaching position at the local college,’’ Will says after passing Matthew a plate of bread across the table. The man pauses mid chew, his stew forgotten as a smile cracks over the tautness of his face. 

‘’What are you gonna teach?’’ 

‘’I haven’t gotten it yet,’ Will concedes,’ but it’s for the criminal phycology class.’’ 

Matthew beams at him as if he is the world which orbits within his gravitation. He runs a piece of bread through the gravy, eye’s darting from his plate and back to Will. 

‘’Professor Graham,’’ he announces around a mouthful of food. 

Will laughs, a sound of silvery bells and says, ‘’you make it sound fashionable.’’ 

Of course, he gets the position and though he tries to dampen down his own happiness as he folds his acceptance letter Matthew is full of self-assured bravado behind him. 

‘’Knew it,’’ the younger man smirks as if the outcome had been obvious. 

‘’I start next week,’’ Will nods as if to confirm this to himself. 

‘’I better sign up quickly then,’ Matthew mutters to himself, thumbing through the college website on his phone. 

‘’What do you mean?’’ Will sounds uneasy. 

The other man lowers his mobile to meet his eyes, ‘’ the class,’ he says as if this explains everything, then seeing that it doesn’t he continues, ‘you really think I'd miss the opportunity of seeing you teach?’’ 

‘’You want to be my student,’’ It is not a question. 

‘’More than I wanted that ankle monitor off,’’ Matthew quips, attention back on his online enrolment form. 

‘’Will there ever be a part of my life that you're not in?’’ the older man grumbles to himself. 

Matthew laughs and it scatters the storm clouds of Will’s mood, 

‘’not likely.’’ 

‘’You look well Mr. Brown,’’ his parole officer is all tight-lipped smile and sharp cut suit. 

He sits opposite her once again, this time in her office across the river from the state penitentiary where they had first met. Matthew looks both at ease and eager as he grins and replied, 

‘’ I am well, life on the outside has been good to me.’’ 

‘’Your physiatrist tells me you have improved extensively though of course he never goes into details.’’ 

‘’I met someone, as far as I can tell the doctor seems taken with the concept.’’ 

She flicks fresh cut bangs from her face and sifts through his file before saying, ‘’very good Mr. Brown, it is widely considered improbable that someone such as yourself would find the benefits of a stable relationship rewarding. I am happy to be proved wrong.’’ 

Matthew rolls his hand on his wrist, mocking both a bow and a salute before stuffing the gum in his mouth up into his cheek. 

‘’Consider the spots of this leopard changed,’’ he winks at her devilishly. 

Sofia’s laugh catches in her throat as she regards the twinkle in his eyes. The sound of her breath cutting off resonates like the choked whimper of a women dying in Matthews ears and he shakes of the memory of Gloria, like a dog shrugging of the rain. 

‘’Then I recommend changing our monthly meetings to every six months instead, unless of course you wished to speak to me before then,’’ the women tap a long fake nail against the mug shot in his file. 

‘’Sounds like a date.’’ 

‘’And although you no longer have court ordered therapy, I appreciate you may wish to continue to see Dr Rensburg.’’ 

Matthew roles his head from side to side, a playful display of his internal debate, ‘’ I'll think about it.’’ 

‘’I don’t know if you are part of a church yet as I recall your talent for reciting scripture,’’ Sofia implores. 

‘’Where do you think i met my partner?’’ Matthew side eye’s her and she gushes appropriately at his half-truth. 

He does not tell her that Will is his one and only place of worship, a man that is both pews and pulpit to the daily mass of his love and adoration. 

‘’It’s been a privilege Matthew Brown,’’ she rises with him and shakes his hand like he wasn’t a convict mere months ago. Like he had her convinced that all he needed was the worlds forgiveness to make him into something more recognizable to the rest of them, if not a shepherd then another sheep. 

And he is fine with this, it is an act he had perfected by his second stint in reform school. The only thing that had never failed him. 

Will had stood at the interactive white board, projector remote in hand and his back to the pupils that file into his classroom, taking in the hushed voices of the eager minds behind him. 

When he eventually turned to face them, he was surprised at the similarities that rang true to the man he had found himself living with. 

Their faces both flawless and peachy in youth and their eyes like hard cut gems within the sheen of their potential. But amiss in the small gathering of young adults was Matthew Brown himself. 

‘he’s late,’ Will thought before fumbling with a button on the remote and turning away from them to kill the lights. 

On the screen flickered the profile of a brain, awash in a technicolour of pink, blue and red. 

‘’Can anyone tell me who’s brain this is?’’ he asked, turning around to cast his eye’s out to the sea of dark figures. He nodded towards a raised hand. 

‘’An abuse victim?’’ a young woman questioned. 

‘’Close,’’ Will replied, wandering to the front of his desk to catch a look at the clock there. His eyes shoot up as the door at the back of the room inches open and in waltzes Matthew. 

Everyone shifted to look at him but the man’s eyes were locked on Will’s own, unbothered by the attention. An unspoken apology passed between them before the man dropped down into an empty seat at the back. 

‘’A psychopath,’’ a young man in the front announced, confidently smoothing back the auburn silk of his hair. 

‘’Correct,’’ Will replied, focusing back on the screen. 

He talked them through the slight restructuring of the prefrontal lobe, described the mass of blue within the brain that symbolized the lack of impulse control, the room that had blossomed to contain a staggering capacity for violence. 

He fed them the figures of crimes committed by average citizens versus the crimes of a person with such a brain and therefore a nature as the one he had described to them. 

Watched them marvel at how it could possibly be lower than that of the average law breaker, then blanch when he differentiated the severity of these crimes. The one’s that could be blamed for far too many parking tickets versus the people responsible for spree murders and homicides so brutal they made history books. 

‘’This is the private war of a psychopath,’’ Will pointed at the image of a happy teenage boy on screen, surrounded by peers who could only be told apart by the differences in their complexions, ‘’can anyone tell me what it is?’’ 

A silence falls heavy over the room, the sound of thoughts trickling to a sluggish stop. 

‘’It’s with himself,’’ Mathew's voice cuts through the confusion, drawing a few looks from the people seated nearest to him. 

‘’Yes,’’ Will replied quietly, both proud and pained for him. Matthew had lived the very thing Will had been describing to the rest of the class, the gimmick of it reeling them into a state of fascination. 

‘’that is why their crimes have a bigger impact despite the limited number of convictions. You can’t pay them or bribe them to stop, can’t bargain with them or strike up a mutual deal of interest.’' 

Will retreated back to the side of the projector, ready to switch it off and flip the lights, 

’’ the only ones that can declare a truce are themselves and that will never happen because they simply aren’t built to ascertain peace.’’ 

The florescent bulbs are blinding at first and Matthew is reminded of prison halls before his eyes rest on the fine cut of Wills figure behind the safety of his desk. 

He can call to mind the dips and grooves of that body, the tight pucker of scar tissue that map their way across bone and muscle beneath the comfortable corduroy of Will’s elbow patch sweater. 

He thinks about the taste of the hips that jut out far enough to hold in place the beltless weight of his slacks. 

Matthew is so preoccupied by this he barely notices the room emptying or the appreciative glances of every young women that passes him on their way to the exit. 

Once it is just the two of them staring back at each other from across the chairs and desks Matthew saunters towards him, clapping slowly and deliberately as he approaches. 

‘’You were late,’’ Will replied, taking the glasses from his face to toss on his desk, ‘’did everything go ok at the parole office?’’ 

‘’Peachy,’’ Mathew drawled, making a show of running the heated soot of his gaze up and down Will’s body, ‘’i like your little teacher outfit.’’ 

Will clenched his jaw, pushing baggy sleeves up to his elbows before turning from the younger man to gather his things, ‘’I'm glad I amuse you.’’ 

‘’You do more than that,’ Matthew stooped low to whisper in the profiler's ear, careful not to touch him, ‘you inspire me.’’ 

He stands back to watch the way Will melts at the rasp of his words. 

‘’Can I walk you home Professor Graham?’’ He teases. 

‘’No need,’ Will replies with a smirk of his own, ‘i drive,’’ and with that he struts from the room, leaving Matthew to his images of back seat romps before hurrying to catch up. 

Matthew keeps his hand resting on Will’s thigh on the drive back to the cottage. They talk about Will’s lesson plan and where they should go to celebrate his new job. There eye’s land on the small gathering of people outside their home at almost the same time and Matthew's grip on him tightens. 

‘’What's all this?’’ he questions as Will face falls. 

He doesn’t answer, merely parks the truck outside the garage and heads for the door. 

Matthew has to hurry to keep up with him and the moment the group of people spot them they descend on the two men, the flashing of bulbs and cameras ringing true in their ears. The younger man reaches out to curl a hand around Will’s arm and pull him back against the protective shield of his chest. 

‘’Mr. Graham, how does it feel knowing today is the anniversary of the death of the Chesapeake ripper?’’ 

‘’Have you given much thought to everything that happened on that day?’’ 

‘’Do you feel as if you have moved on from the perilous relationship between yourself and Hannibal the Cannibal?’’ 

They shout their questions over one another, each journalist jostling for attention and Matthew is reminded of mice too frenzied to avoid the birds that hunt them. 

He catches himself before he can look at Will in a way that is clearly marked with the betrayal he feels at being the last to know about the importance of the day. 

He feels foolish now for having believed Will’s sudden bid for a teaching position had been anything but an attempt at distraction. 

Instead, Matthew pushes them aside as he drags will forwards towards the front door of the house. Before they can make it inside, he hears someone ask Will for an autograph and has to stuff his fist in his pocket before swinging it into the face of the groupie. 

They stand in the silence of the hall for a second, Will glaring at the floor and Matthew attempting to stare Will down. 

‘’Were you ever going to tell me?’’ the younger man implores. 

‘’What's there to tell?’’ Will mutters, throwing down his book bag and stomping to the fridge. As if pulled by a cord that connects them Matthew follows, dumping his jacket across a chair and trying to figure out how best to approach him. 

‘’You're pretty good at hiding how you feel,’’ he says matter of fact. 

‘’At least I can feel,’’ Will snaps and immediately deflates, 'I'm sorry.’’ 

‘’No, it’s ok, you kind of have a point,’’ Matthew raises his hands as if pleading with him not to shoot. 

‘’I thought I wouldn’t have to think about it,’ Will sighs, downing a swig of scotch,’ wouldn’t have to deal with it.’’ 

Matthew rubs at the side of his neck, as thick as a tree trunk beneath his hand and Will follows the movement half-heartedly. 

‘’After the fall do you know what they called me?’’ his voice is barely above a whisper. 

Matthew shakes his head. 

‘’Frankenstein's bride,’ Will says wistfully,’ like I married the monster up there on the cliff.... right before I sent us off of it.’’ 

The sadness that empties Will’s tone of any other emotion causes something to buckle within Matthew’s own chest and he is grabbing at him to hold the profiler against him. At first Will resists, tries to push him away but only ends up spilling amber liquid down them both before giving in to the weight of Matthews arms. 

Do you know what I call you?’’ Matthew asks into his forest of curls. He feels will shake his head. 

‘’Mine,’’ he answers and it sounds like a promise. 

Wills POV 

It feels as if there is a thorn in my side, buried deep enough to hitch my breath around the pain of it. We curl up at each other's side and down alcohol in front of the tv until we are red cheeked and slurring. It surprises you how quiet I am when I am drunk, as if you had expected me to become emboldened with toxification. But I am introverted beside you as you hold me, planting kisses against my lips and neck when you catch the faraway look in my eyes. 

I thought I had managed to avoid the reality of today until the reporters' gate crashed my denial, yelling facts at me in the form of questions. Some are still stood outside my door even this late into the night and although you had shut the curtains and distracted me with the allure of your affection I can still feel them prying at our privacy and it feels like all is lost. 

Eventually you fall asleep against my side, face burrowed into the webbing of my jumper and I sink my fingers into the black tendrils of your hair. You still keep it military short and it is as endearing to me now as it was in the beginning. 

A familiar voice pulls my attention back to the tv as I drain the last of the scotch in my glass. 

‘’Tonight, on our Chesapeake ripper special we have with us a generalist who found herself at the very heart of the five-year operation to catch the Lithuanian killer,’ a narrator introduced the fiery red head as if she had just stepped onto the set of a game show. 

Freddy Lounds looks as sharp and poised as usual, crocodile print suit with pointed black shoes that scream predator in their own right. Her smile is sharp as a blade. 

‘’Can you tell us a little bit about the new documentary coming out this Friday?’’ another woman asks and Will vaguely remembers her from some reality TV court room drama. 

‘’Yes of course and please,’ she leans in slightly as if divulging a secret,’ call me Freddy. I was first approached to take part in the up-and-coming series-The killer beside me- by NBCs producer Mike Richards. He was initially interested in an interview with me to get a little filler for the show but he quickly established that the information I had about the case was, to quote Mr. Richards, ‘television gold.’' 

The interview looks as entranced as Will in that moment who both sit and stare open mouthed at the women on screen. 

‘’Son of a bitch,’’ Will mutters as Freddy’s words hit home. 

‘’I knew of Will Graham before Dr Hannibal Lecter, as we often found ourselves colliding on the latest crime scene. He was a strange man even then and I believe it was this quality that drew the cannibal to him in the first place.’’ 

‘’Can you tell us a little bit more about their relationship?’’ 

‘’The doctor sent the profiler murders like a man might send his lover flowers, I believe on a few occasions he did actually send him a bouquet, in the body of one of his murder victims of course,’ Freddy’s smile was simpering, a cat who did indeed enjoy her cream, 

‘‘they were obsessed with one another like that and all the while Mr. Graham had no idea the killer he was hunting was in fact his good friend and trusted psychiatrist.’’ 

‘’That’s another thing,’ the host interrupted,’ everyone raves about how good he was at his job but from what you’ve just said he doesn’t sound all that impressive. The killer was right beside him the whole time and he had no idea.’’ 

‘’No idea until he was framed by the man for murders he didn’t commit,’ Freddy explains,’ or so he claims.’’ 

‘’I remember that.’’ 

‘’I also happened to meet many of the people who fell prey to Dr Lecter as you’ll see when you watch the documentary. In total it is a reconstruction of the story behind the headlines about the ripper investigation, the people and families that were destroyed so that Lecter might seduce Mr. graham into a life of homicide, hence the original title of my last column-The Murder Husbands.’’ 

‘’This all sounds very fascinating Miss Lounds, like something out of a Grimm's fairy tale.’’ 

‘’And the story isn’t even over yet,’ Freddy looks to her left where a picture of Will is projected onto the wall behind her. In it he is looking to the man beside him, to Matthew whose stare is pitch black and distanced as they stand frozen mid stride at each other's sides. 

Will is bound by the photo of them on screen, trying to guess at when and where it could have been taken. How long had they been followed? His cheeks burn with embarrassment once his mind predicted what Freddie would hint at next. 

‘’He has a new murder husband now, as it seems Will Graham has a type, though this new one is a I little on the young side compared to Lecter,’ Freddy sounds tauntingly waspish, 

‘’ Matthew Brown was the man Will sent after Lecter to try and kill him when he was falsely imprisoned. He was a nurse at the very institution Mr. Graham was locked up in at the time. I guess they do say love is crazy.’' 

‘’Well, this kind certainly is,’’ the host sounds both delighted and horrified. 

‘’He’s just been released on parole after a six-year stint in the upstate penitentiary of Mane, this was for the 2008 murder of the bailiff at Mr. Graham’s trial. He was Will’s not so secret admirer, the interview I recorded with him in an effort to draw the man out will be included in the documentary of course.’’ 

‘’Well, I for one cannot wait,’ the women grins down the camera before it pans of into a spiel of adverts. 

Will’s POV 

It takes me a moment to realize I am shaking, the ice rattling around in my glass before I let it fall to the floor with a dull thud. I slowly untangle myself from your long limbs, heavy as the dead in sleep and creep up the stairs and into the bathroom. 

I am so far removed when I turn on the shower, as if walking through the scene of a dream, feel nothing as I slip beneath the cold spray. I let the water seep into my cloths until I am so heavy that I fall to the floor. 

At some point the silence of my tears turns into the pained wails of some other man from some other time. The person who had fallen for the stranger that had come to me in the shape of a friend and mentor before shattering like an illusion on the rocks of the shore. 

I clutch at my scar that cuts in across my stomach as if I am bleeding out again and it is easy to become transported back to that night. I am shaking apart in the ice of the rain and your stare, the bathroom falling away to the set of your kitchen as you let me slip between your fingers like the tea cup you had described to me. 

But you hadn’t looked satisfied when I had shattered, merely as gutted as I felt and we both left your Baltimore home emptier than when we had entered. I use to tell myself it was because we had lost a daughter and therefore our new life but you hadn’t taken away anything that was no longer mine anymore. 

And if time had reversed in that moment, I know I still would have ended up where I am now, thinking of you in the bowels of an empty tub as reruns of our story carry on into the night without us. 

Matthew wakes to the sound of water running but by the time he reaches the top of the stairs it has stopped and Will emerges from the bathroom, towel secure around his hips. Their eyes collide as the older man slips past him and neither one comments on the temperature of the water that falls from his skin like icicles or the pile of sodden clothing in the hamper by the door. 

When he joins Will in bed, he seals the heat of himself around his smaller body, arms straight jacketed across his chest and legs entangled within the sheets. They carry the mutiny of unsaid secrets between them into the silence of dawn, their eye’s alight with the reflection of a flame that dances until it dies. 

Matthew leaves for the boat yard once he is sure all reporters are gone from their door and Will insists, he will be fine. As if to prove this he picks up his fishing rod and gifted tackle box, in mind to surprise Matthew before wandering off to the docks not far from the cluster of broken-down boats. As he is leaving the cottage though he almost tramples on the bundle full of flowers wrapped in red paper on his door step. 

Panic laces through Will before he remembers the documentary and the frensy of journalists, bending down to snatch up the package. Artfully arranged are the bunch and Will runs over the meaning of them each as he plucks them free and lets them fall into the garage trash can. Aloe- affection and grief, the heart ace of red carnation, clematis for mental beauty and the rainbow spectrum of marigolds to symbolize despair, mourning and jealousy. 

Someone had clearly done their research but Will finds it all rather petty, the old scare tactics of the press or his strange wayward fans more tedious than threatening now. 

Mathew’s face shines so bright it is as if a star is lodged in his throat when Will returns to walk him home, presenting him with a large sea mouth bass. 

Look at the size of that thing,’’ he holds out a pale, thin finger to run along the scales of its flesh. 

‘’The tides turned just in time to catch him before the gulls could beat me to it,’’ Will sounds as relaxed as before, when the world had just consisted of the two of them and endless pales of winter weather to keep them close. 

‘’I don’t know how to cook him,’’ Matthew confessed, smile crooked. Will leans up to taste the side of it with his own before ducking away. 

‘’I’ll show you,’’ he promises. 

‘’I guess everyone knows about us now,’’ Matthew announces over the steamed fish between them. Will runs his tongue over his teeth before sipping at his wine, not all that eager to discuss their current situation. 

‘’You watched the documentary?’’ He makes it sound like a question. 

‘’No but everyone online is talking about it.’’ Matthew replied. 

‘’You don’t seem to mind this,’’ the profiler observes. 

‘’I’m more worried about you to be honest, what do I care what a bunch of hack job quacks and wanna be Nancy Drews think of me?’’ 

Will’s amused smile in genuine as he says, ‘’I'm fine with it and by fine, I mean not ashamed,’’ he sets his glass down as if to punctuate the finality of the statement. 

‘’Why not?’’ Mathew tried not to sound as ecstatically giddy as feels. 

‘’Look at you,’ Will motions from the chiselled features of his face down to the marble physique of his body,’ now look at me, not even I'm sure what you’re doing with me but I'm not going to complain about it.’’ 

Matthews scoffs, ‘’ as if you don’t know.’’ 

When Will raises his eye brow at him in question he flips the knife in his hand into the air before catching it with a grace that forever cause heat to flood Will’s groin, ‘’i may be crazy Mr. Graham but I'm crazy for you.’’ 

Will catches himself staring so drags his eyes away, clearing his throat around the swell of Mathews name that spreads like a fire through his blood. 

‘’We never celebrated your sudden career change,’’ he adds, gesturing about him with his knife as he says,’ we should do that now the freakshows died back down again.’’ 

‘’What were you thinking?’’ Will replied. 

‘’Nothing fancy, I think I just wanna take you to a bar,’’ Matthew smirks at him over the top of his own glass. 

‘’Sounds....interesting.’’ 

Matthew giggles lowly, ‘’you're the only interesting thing about it Will, which works for me.’’ 

The night is unusually warm, the soft breath of the approaching summer on their necks as they load into the truck. Matthew looks like he has just stepped of the cover of a magazine, loose fit black pants and shirt with a stiff collar and the top of his buttons undone just enough to show of a sliver of cream-colored chest. 

Will’s eyes are drawn to the design of his tattoo that peaks through the gap every time he exhales. The profile wears something similar but in the sharp contrast of a midnight blue which does things to the shade of his eyes that has Matthew fidgeting. 

Neither mention the atmosphere of first date jitters around them as they make their way to a bar on the edge of town. Will waits until they park and stops Matthew with a brush of his fingers against the other man's arm before he opens the door to get out. 

‘’Here,’ Will takes a small leather box from his pocket and places it in Matthew’s hand,’ my way of saying thanks.’’ 

Matthew tries to read the shadows in his eyes before popping the box open and staring at the house key cushioned on the padding. He slips his finger into the ring to hold it up between them. 

‘’A key to the cottage,’’ the young man states, sounding slightly distant. 

‘’It feels like you moved in a long time ago...Might as well make it official,’’ Will surmises. 

‘’You want me to stay?’’ 

‘’Of course.’’ 

And then Matthew is grinning, the pearly gleam of his teeth and his eyes like the backlit stars in the night sky behind them. He reaches out with a large hand to cup Will’s face, thumb stroking at the light swell of stubble before pulling him in to kiss the bud of his lips. 

Matthew thinks about dying, how he would be ok with it if for no other reason than to never have to move on from the perfection of that moment. 

But they both survive the push and pull of each other's mouth and eventually Will suggest they leave before the parking ticket runs out. 

The bar is full of beach wood and sport memorabilia, little groups of football fans are clustered about the tables and stools as the crowd from a game on the tv melds into the background chatter. 

Will follows after Matthew, sinking down next to him at the bar and admiring the way he morphs like a Chameleon into the environment. 

‘’The usual?’’ the orderly asks him and Will’s head bobs before his eyes drift back to the tv in the corner. 

‘’Jack and a light bud,’’ he hears the other man order, momentarily distracted by the man two seats down from them. 

‘’Looks like a close call,’’ Will gestures to the football match, at a loss for words. 

‘’It’s not as interesting as hockey,’’ Matthew shrugs before passing him his whiskey. 

They sip their drinks and wallow in the normality of a Sunday night on the town. It feels surreal and every time their eye’s meet Will tries to ignore the hunger he sees there. 

Matthew for once isn't so stubborn and feeling slightly buzzed from his beer already he reaches out to brush his fingers across the fragile jut of Wills cheekbone. 

‘’Watch out boys we got us a couple of doughnut punchers in our midst, ’the man a few seats down bellows, loud and obnoxious. 

All eyes are laser points on the image of them as Will shrinks slightly in his seat and Matthew drops his hand, jaw clenching so hard the muscle make an audible pop. 

‘’What the fuck did you just say?’ the younger man swings on him, almost knocking over his stool. Will’s hand latches around his bicep, begging him in a whisper to just let it go. 

The man shuffles his solid body in his seat, side eyeing them with a smirk before taking a swig from the brown neck of his cheap beer. 

‘’Please,’’ Will breaths into his ear and Matthew’s anger simmers enough to allow himself to be pulled back down, back to the rest of the bar. 

Uncaring of the unwanted attention Will keeps a hand on his knee to calm him, trying to distract Matthew long enough to defuse the tension. 

‘’So where do you want to go after this?’’ the profiler gestures at their drinks. 

The deathly stillness of Matthew’s muscles, pulled taught enough to snap throughout every inch of his body slowly relaxes like the unravelling of a snake. 

‘’Maybe grab something from the stop-and-shop, go cop a squat on the beach,’’ he suggests, only slightly broody. 

Will jumps at the idea, hurrying to knock back his whiskey so they could finally leave. 

‘’Looks like the scrawny ones the chick,’’ The man cackles loudly, causing the people closest to snicker into their glasses. 

This time when Matthew jumps to his feet the stool does fall to the ground behind him and Will is only fast enough to snatch at the material of the orderly's shirt as he prowls up to their heckler. 

‘’You got a problem with us?’’ Matthew’s voice is as still and unaffected as the black glass of his eyes. 

Wills POV 

I try to hold onto you but you slip from my grip like smoke before appearing as unmovable as marble before the other man. Your face has fallen into the blank mask of a predator, features smooth and neutral, I watch you shake of your humanity the way others shrug out of their shoes. 

‘’Not a problem,’ the man taunts him,’ just think guys like you should come with a warning label is all.’’ 

I find myself agreeing though not for the reasons the man may think. Everyone in the bar is frozen in place, some looking gleeful as the scene unfolds. 

‘’Guys like me?’’ You questions and I can tell you are mocking the other man, content to toy with him now that you are done with sizing him up. 

All juvenile demeanour falls free from the man as you roll your shoulders, head tilted to the side as you look down on him enough to leave him feeling threatened. In response to the fear, I can feel radiating from him like steam from an oven, he rises to his feet, almost towering over you as you now stand toe to toe. 

My stomach clenches into a knot too tight to move around as I take note of the nearest could be weapons. Glass bottles, chairs, a knife used to cut lemons just off to the side of the bar, my fists. 

‘’Fag,’’ the man spits into your face and I know it is the last thing you are aware of before all else is lost to you. 

You lunge at him as fluid and instant as a slit to the throat, a blur of movement that leave my eyes fluttering to catch up. Then there is the scent of blood in the air as you drive the hammer of your punch into his face over and over. I hear the splintering crack of cartilage and catch glimpses of bones crumbling beneath the scarred point of your knuckles. 

In the distance glass shatters against the floor and chair legs screech in despair. Blood splatter, like an exploded ink cartridge, covers your face as you bare your teeth in a grin that is both feral and depraved. 

You don’t hear me scream your name or beg for it to be over, neither do you hear the man you beat so badly his face turns to pulp and his breathing descends into the haunting hiss of a death rattle. 

I can’t stop you and reeling from this realization I stumble out of the bar and into the night. Dimly I am are that you have the keys to the truck but I stagger on as I once had through the snow laced fields of Wolf trap, a killer at my back. 

The whiskey turns to led in my veins as my knees buckle and i slip to the pavement, nausea rolling sea deep in my gut. Your violence throbs in my skull, the images short circuiting on a continuous loop of carnage as I shake apart in the gutter. 

I wrap my arms around myself as if to hold myself together jolt clean out of my skin when I look up and see the white washed corpse of Gloria Gorella across the lot. I clench my eyes shut, stumbling back to my feet and when I open them again, prepared to run, all I find is you instead. 

Though I cannot see the blood on the black fabric of your clothing it stains almost the entirety of your face, an intricate webbing of war paint that leave your eyes soulless as they land on me. Where I am a shuddering mess of shot nerves, you are as calm as the dark sky above us and you reach for me like the serene slide of night time clouds. 

I stagger back, hand shooting up to keep you at bay before flagging as the strength is leached from me. 

‘’Will,’’ you say and I'm dumb struck by the confusion in your voice. 

‘’Just,’ my own voice is like the abrupt bite of a gun,’ don’t.’ 

And only then, with your knuckles scraped clean of their skin, do you look wounded. 

I drift back to where we parked, unsteady and unnerved as you shuffle along behind me and it occurs to me that you are usually soundless, only now dragging your feet in a way that you hope settles the fear in me. 

We get into the truck without a word and you drive us home, now both of us blank and numb to the night's events. Distantly I wonder if this is what you feel like all the time before I let myself think of nothing at all. 

By the time they reach the cottage Will’s own quiet fury finds him steady and sober as he slips out the vehicle and in through the front door. 

‘’Look I'm sorry,’’ Matthew say’s seconds after nudging it shut behind him. 

‘’That word doesn’t mean a damn thing to you so why do you expect it to mean anything to me,’’ Will shouts, kicking his shoes of and snatching the jacket from his body. 

The orderly hovers around him as if too scared to get closer and too sacred to move away. 

‘’He had no right to talk to us like that.’’ 

‘’Exactly Matt, he was just talking. What, did it hurt your imaginary feeling?’’ 

The sound of a sudden downpour of rain patters against the windows and they stand in the darkness, neither one moving away to turn on the lights. 

Will can’t see the look on Matthew's face but the silence feels deafening. 

‘’I’m going to bed,’’ the older man mutters, not even stripping from his cloths before pulling back the covers and collapsing against the mattress. 

He listens to the slight rustling of Matthew peeling away his outfit and starting a new fire from left over wood and newspaper. Then he is succumbing to sleep as the adrenaline drains him of the willpower to stay awake. 

Will opens his eyes to the same darkness he had drifted off in, the fire having died out at some point in the night. But there is something different about the blackness and he sits up in it, trying to ascertain what is wrong. 

‘’Matt,’’ he calls out and is startled by what sounds like nails scraping along the wall. This, along with the sharp intake of his breath is all that can be heard before the click of, what sounds like footfalls grows ever nearer. 

He knows what is coming, heart lodges in his throat before plummeting to his stomach as the sharp outlines of a rack of antlers appears from behind the doorway. Will’s eyes drop down to the curve of the stag's skull, the bulging muscles of its body and the bony knobs of its legs before darting back up to its face. 

‘’No,’’ is the only word Will can breathe and it curls in the air like smoke as it leaves his lips. He tries to dig his heels into the bed beneath him, to backpedal towards the headboard in a desperate bid for distance. 

Then the stag opens its mouth and instead of the heavy chuff of its breath it calls Will’s name in the voice of Matthew Brown. This is a terror that is new to him as all the blood leaks to some distant place within him, leaving him cold as concrete. 

‘’Will,’’ it say’s again, this time sounding further away. He tries to scream but the noise dies into silence before it can leave his throat. 

‘’Will,’’ Matthew's voice sounds straight into his ear, as clear as a voice in his head and Will opens his eyes to the sight of the fire hissing in the hearth and familiar arms thick around his chest. 

‘’You're ok,’’ Matthew sighs into his hair, stroking a hand down the side of his face now slick with sweat. 

They are in bed and Will’s eyes dart about the room just to be sure the shadows come up empty. 

‘’Its ok,’’ the other man says again and it is such a novelty to be comforted after a nightmare that Will almost forgets he his angry at him. Upon remembering the man at the bar, the profiler shrugs him of and peals away his shirt, settling with his back to him. 

‘’Still mad huh,’’ Matthew says barely above a whisper as he settles back down next to him, careful not to touch him. 

‘’What did you dream about?’’ He asks when it is clear Will has no intention of answering him. The profiler considers the cliché that is his silent treatment before sighing and replying, 

‘’I had a nightmare.’’ 

‘’About...?’’ 

‘’About you,’’ Will says, emotionless. 

‘’ You sure it wasn't a wet dream?’’ Matthew's smirk is audible, his hand inching closer across the space between them. 

‘’The driest dream I've ever had,’’ he mutters darkly. 

The other man sighs, a sound of defeat before pleading with Will, ‘’tell me what to do to make it better.’’ 

‘’You've done enough Matt,’’ he replies darkly. 

But Matthew could have sworn it was the opposite, that no matter what he did, it was never enough. 

When he wakes up to filtered sunlight through the windows that illuminate the dancing specks of dust in the air Will has already left for work. Matthew peals his fists from where they have dried to the sheets, leaving behind brown streaks of blood to go ease his body beneath the spray of the shower. 

The water turns pinks as it trails down the sculpted curves of his body. He remembers the way blood had always stuck so stubbornly behind the sharp point of his ears, rubbing his fingers behind them like a rather large cat before proceeding to get changed for class. 

By the time he leaves the house he is determined to try harder for the sake of Will. He’ll turn his music down and pick up his cloths from the floor, he’ll work out for so long he simply won't have the energy for a physical fight and even though the compulsion to inflict pain seems like a part of him too big to get rid of, he resolves to find a way to tame it. He’ll file away the sharpness of his teeth and his intent to use them. 

Matthew breezes through the college grounds with some time to spare so he heads for the canteen, intent on the coffee machine. 

He doesn’t mind the place really considering he was never that good in school, far too quiet and strange to be popular. Leaning back against the door of the fire exit, Matthew sips his coffee and surveys the gathering of students with the keen eye of a hawk. 

‘’You look as bored as I feel,’’ a girl appears at his side. Her own carton of coffee is gripped between French tipped nails and her slight smile is shiny with gloss. She still looks like a child to him though. 

‘’There’s not much to do around here,’’ he states and she hums in agreement. 

‘’You’re in professor Grahams class,’’ she side eyes him, arms across her chest as she copies his posture,’ same as me.’’ 

‘’I found it fascinating,’’ Matthew drawls, smirk in place. 

‘’You seemed to know what you were talking about.’’ 

Before Matthew can reply he is jerked forward by the force of a shoulder colliding with his own. 

‘’Whoa, sorry there,’ the man child who had shoved him sounds everything but. Matthew dimly recognizes the auburn blaze of his hair, skin almost impossibly paler than his own. He stands in the gap between them, feet planted in his sketchers. 

‘’So, what are we talking about?’' He looks from Matthew to the girl who looks stuck somewhere between frustration and unease. 

‘’Casey,’’ the boy nods to her, the slime trail of a smile across his face. 

Matthew, already finding the standoff tedious, bins his coffee and checks the time on his phone. 

‘’We were talking about criminals,’’ the girl snaps. 

‘’Speaking of,’ Mathew interrupts the other boys reply, his mouth falling shut,’ I’m heading to class.’’ 

He is stalking out the door, long legs carrying him quickly across the yard and Casey is scrambling after him in her effort to keep up. 

They leave the boy behind, eyes narrowed in their direction. 

They filter into the classroom and Matthew feels his gaze snag on Will’s form, plaid shirt and blue denim before he seats himself near the door. The girl settles next to him, already forgotten as he fixes Will in his sights with the focus of a hunter. 

Will’s eyes run over him but do not stay as he pushes the glasses onto his face, a book balanced along the bone of his forearm. 

He scans the words on the page before seeming to lose interest and tossing the book to the side. 

‘’ So, who here knows what a psychopath's greatest weapon is?’’ 

A boy at the front, the same one that had collided with him in the canteen Matthew realizes, shoves his hand into the air. 

‘’Lack of emotion.’’ 

Will nods, scanning over the class, ‘’and they’re weakness.’’ 

‘’Thrill seeking?’’ a voice filters through the silence. 

Will shakes his head, pushing back against his desk, he perches and continues to search. 

‘’Lack of emotion,’’ Matthew replies and watches how Will manages to stop himself from turning to him, determined to remain indifferent. Though he is right and the older man confirms as much. 

The girl beside him grins as if this were her own personal victory. 

‘’Yes, their strength and their weakness are one of the same. They are a paradox but not a complicated one if you know how to read them.’’ 

He makes them flip through text books to analyse behavioural patterns, takes them through the psychopathy check list and barely represses a smile when one student exclaims, 

‘’You just basically described my step dad's personality.’’ 

Will then plays a video for the class, a normal family on the surface until their pets die and some of the siblings start to grow bruises and cuts, until the mother is casting lingering looks at the youngest child as he practices emotional expressions in the mirror like a kid might pull silly faces in gest. 

But the face of a monster is that of the boy's angelic features, serene and docile and dead as the cat he had drowned in the Neighbour's ponds. His parents hug him though he does not hold them back, his teacher is kind to him though this mostly goes unnoticed and his siblings try to play with him but always end getting hurt, so very confused that their pain is the only game the little boy seems to enjoy. 

Once the movie is over Casey thrust her hand into the air and before Will can acknowledge her, she says, ‘’so do you really believe psychopaths don’t recognize love?’’ 

‘’They recognize it but it doesn’t mean they understand it,’ Will replies, 'the same way we know death is painful but can never truly know that pain until we, ourselves are dying.’’ 

‘’I don’t buy it,’’ the girl mutters and Matthew grins when Will frowns and says, ‘’Sorry?’’ 

‘’You think someone like that can’t feel love?’’ she sounds challenging. 

Will’s eyes flicker to Matthews and he reads something in them though from the distance between them he can’t make out what before the profiler levels the girl with a look. 

‘’When I hear the clicking of hooves, I don’t think unicorns, I think horses,’’ his voice holds the steady authority he had used when relaying evidence for the FBI, cold as the corpses before him. 

The girl shies away, stunned into silence along with the rest of the students before a bell announces the end of class in a shrill scream. 

Matthew is momentarily frozen within the ice chip of Will’s words before he rises and filters outside with everyone else. He thinks about hopelessness for a second, how it starts out as the loan howl of a wolf before rising into the roar of an ocean that spits you out on strange shores, their resemblance like the desolation of empty graves. 

How he longs to fill the spaces inside of him with the cold dead bodies of others. But he has never been one to lose a fight and though the battle is with himself his determination is steel as he marches back to the classroom, intent on confronting Will. 

This is how he stumbles onto the scene of Will and the red headed boy, how the profiler’s laughter is clipped and genuine as his student boasts and shows off for him. 

He watches them from the doorway, nails biting into the palms of his hand as he imagines the collapse of a wind pipe, the flash of panic in eyes, as green as clovers. 

‘’See you next week-,’’ Will trails of awkwardly. 

‘’Troy,’’ the boy grins until the red tint of his gums show. 

He passes Matthew on the way out, stopping at his side and raising one pale eyebrow. 

‘’See something you like?’’ he snickers. 

‘’I don’t see anything,’’ Matthew replies tonelessly, eyes devoid and depthless. 

The man child’s bravado cracks down the middle at the look but he recovers quickly,’’ good.’’ 

By the time he has left and Matthew turns back to the classroom Will is stood right in front of him, arms full of textbooks as he struggles to keep hold of his books bag. 

At the sight of his clumsiness all of Matthews tension melts, metal liquidated above the lick of a flame. 

‘’Hand me some of that,’’ he implores, already reaching out to gather the books into his arms. Will lets him, his features still hard as stone as he mutters his thanks and they walk side by side. 

‘’did you mean what you said?’’ Matthew blurts,’ the whole psycho’s and love thing.’’ 

Will avoids his eye’s, taking in the trim grass of the courtyard they walk through and the couples that stretch across it, limbs tangled in a knot of arousal. 

‘’Of course,’’ 

‘’So, you don’t think I love you...Or you don’t think I'm a psychopath?’’ Matthew presents him with either option, staring down at the profiler. 

‘’I don’t know what to think?’’ 

‘’Since when?’’ 

When Will doesn’t reply Matthew stops in front of him, dumbing the books onto the gravel at their feet. Still the other man won’t look at him so the orderly reaches out to catch his face and guide it until their eyes connects. 

They are like the glass orbs of a marble and they pull him nearer as if under the current of their tide. 

‘’No one could love you as much as I do,’’ Matthew slurs against his lips, thick as smoke. 

Will audibly swallows, his hand coming up to the other against his face to pull away gently. 

‘’The other night at the bar,’ he starts, eyes almost crossed as he stares up at Matthew still so close to him,’ that can’t happen again.’’ 

And Matthew is nodding, their noses brushing as he breaths into him inches from each other's lips. Both feel boneless, just shy from nuzzling the other before they are reluctantly parting and Matthew takes Will’s hand in his own to pull him into the truck. 

They never make it out of the college parking lot as the orderly leans over Will in the driver's seat, sliding his seat back and stretching on top of him in one smooth motion. 

Finally, their lips collide and the intake of Will breath is similar to the gasp he had made when he had once been stabbed in the stomach by Hannibal. It whips the lust inside Matthew into a frenzy as their mouths click with suction and they moan around the hot press of tongues. 

Wills POV 

There is something as depraved in your eyes as there had been the other night when you were measuring the weight of another man's life in your hands. You now run those same palms against my chest, into the gap between the buttons on my shirt until your fingers brush the heated peak of my nipple. I reach up to hold the thickness of your neck, to keep your lips against mine and imagine that the taste of a battle lost is the exact same tang as the metal of your mouth. 

I close my eyes to the obsidian shock of your hair and how my fingers run through it in my efforts to pull you closer still and I open my mind to you, much the same way I part my thighs so you can fit between them. 

At first there is the familiar expanse of emptiness, as if I am both in and of a night so dark and deep it feels infinite, and then there is the briefest pulse of red. Like a strobe behind my eyes, I watch what little you do feel light up the word around us, a foetus within the womb. 

It throbs in time with the fistfuls of me that you grab at and hold onto. Your hand slips into my jeans to cup me and it breaks like lighting across the sky. As my own fingers curl around you once past the barrier of your underwear it splits open the blackness, a sun imploding within the thicket of shadows that is your mind. 

Your thumb presses into the slit on the head of my erection, beading with moisture and the pleasure of it makes me hiss and arch up into you. 

Your breath hitches on a laugh as you push me back roughly, following me down to latch our lips together again. You groan, low and load as I swallow your tongue and my free hand works its way into your shirt to run over the ink on your ribs. 

The heat of it is shocking in its intensity and I wonder how you can stand it, burning so happily on the stake of me. When you draw back to look at me, I see the weakness I riddle you with, eyes so big and so full with the promise of my nearness as you try to suppress the tremble in your jaw and fail. 

I see it all. How your devotion flows through the filth of us, pure as winter snow that threatens to kill me as it crystalizes. It makes my heart skip it’s beat then pick up twice as fast and thunderous. And if I could catch my breath, I would tell you how love looks like lithium across the heat in your cheeks and the haze in your eyes. 

‘’God you’re so hot,’’ you moan, sounding pained and punctured as your forehead falls to my chest. 

‘’Or maybe I'm just so cold it burns,’’ I say huskily and it is enough to have you rocking desperately against me, hips a rhythm less stutter as I milk you of your release. 

I follow you soon after, excited by the sight of you so undone you shake in my arms and I can’t imagine what else love is supposed to look like if not the way you look at me. I can’t remember what could have possibly made me doubt you. 

They stumble into the house, tangled legs and arms entwined as Matthew walks Will backwards towards the bed. They break apart only so Will can crouch before the fireplace to start a fire and Matthew heads for the backdoor to collect more wood to see them through the night. 

His eye’s drop to his boot as something crackles beneath his foot, the protest of crushed cellophane. He stoops down, fingers brushing over broken petals as he frowns in confusion at the flowers. An image comes to mind of the kid from class, the way he had looked at Will as if he would die had he tried to focus on anything else. 

He scrunches the remains of the modest bouquet in his fist before rising and stomping back inside. Matthew hears the distant slam of cupboards as Will searches for glasses in the kitchen and without pausing he stands before the fire, tossing the flowers into flame. 

His anger hisses along with the plants as they shrivel and burn before Will is pulling Matthew backwards onto the mattress. With his body and his supple little moans, he makes Matthew forget everything but the sound of his name.


	14. Chapter 14

Will can feel the warmth of another's blood as it runs in rivulets down his skin. He stands before the slump of a body in the stillness and silence that followed swiftly after the taking of a life. It is exactly how he remembers it though he cannot recall how he got here, no matter how hard he tries. 

Fortunately, the young orderly at his side can bring to mind every details of each moment that led to this one. 

Matthews POV 

At work, as I weld together broken pieces of metal that form the whole of a boat, I am intent on the gossip of the other men around me. Because of you they have grown to trust me a lot quicker than most and as such they speak freely around me, about their lives and family. 

‘’So how did the wife's birthday go?’’ the shortest man of the bunch, an old fool called Harry throw his question at the man opposite them. 

This guy is balled and thin as a willow branch and whatever he says always sounds slightly glum, ‘’i think she liked the watch, said it was pretty but.... still no action.’’ 

Then other men all titter in sympathy. 

‘’That’s a damn shame.’’ 

‘’Pretty little thing like her just lying next to you night after night, and you can’t even touch her. It’s enough to drive a guy insane.’’ 

I put down the soldering iron to chug at the coffee in my flask, made by you just the way I like it. 

‘’What the ever-loving fuck are you bitching about Thompson, me and my wife aint had sex since the 80’s.’’ 

I can’t help but burst into laughter with the other men, swiping at my eye with my thumb and kicking at the dirt with my boot. 

‘’What about you kid? Harry turns to me and so too do the rest of the crew. 

‘’Only a couple times a day,’’ I shrug and watch them blanch. 

‘’Get out of town,’’ Thompson scoffs in disbelief. 

I eye them all, the younger of the group only a few years older than you and I can’t crush the concern quick enough to hide it from my face. 

‘’It’s cause your young is all,’ one of the men concedes,’ but that fella of yours ‘aint as spry as yourself, go easy on him won’t ya,’’ he winks at me and the rest of the men shift uncomfortably, not as at peace with the whole ‘man on man thing,’ as they call it. 

Harry clears his throat and thus the thickness of the air as he asks me, ’got any good ideas for valentine's day, I could sure use some?'’ 

In truth I had no idea the holiday was so near, never before had it rated important enough to remember celebrating. In prison there was simply no such thing. But now I have you and the freedom to enjoy you, in any way that I can think to do so. 

‘’Not yet,’’ I grin, grateful for the heads up, though I am sure the tacky gimmick that is valentine's day with all its commercial plasticity will feel like an assault to your sensibility. I still want to make good on another excuse to waste my pay check on you and to keep you in the confines of our bed. 

I finger my own house key on its ring in my pocket as run through each sickly sweat image of roses and chocolates and cards. 

The day’s last longer now, the sun holding strong in the sky long after six and the fresh scent of cut lawns mixes pleasantly with sea salt on my walk home. This time though I head into town, eager for some inspiration and as i stand in the card shop, I am among many others with the same thought in mind. 

I search along each rack, nudging people deep in thought out of my way as I scan every glossy cover of red and pink. In the end I see a card in the Get Well Soon section that is perfect and the irony isn’t lost on me. 

I run my fingers over the image on the cover, the dark figure of two men that sit opposite each other on a small fishing boat in the dim light of dawn. It is as perfect as the idea it gives me and I tell the teenager behind the till to keep the change. 

‘’Honey I'm home,’’ I yell as kick of my shoes at the door. Now that you are back teaching you soak up your plentiful days off by sitting out in the garden either reading or swindling poles into fishing rods. 

This is where i find you, amongst the lush green of the grass with wood shaving all about you and the wink of the knife’s edge as you flick it free of sawdust. 

I stoop to kiss the slope of your shoulder, so sun-baked it is as speckled with freckles as it is with scars now. 

You squint your eyes closed against the sunlight as you tilt your face up at me and I give you the peck of my lips, an ease of expectation now, like the way you slide your tomatoes onto my plate because you can never stand the taste and in return, I give you the pickles from my hamburger. 

‘’Good day?’’ you shade your face with your hand so you can see me before I stand before you, blocking out the sun. 

‘’I’ve had worse,’’ I smirk, surveying the mess around you, ’what’s all this?’’ 

‘’Just a project,’’ you sigh, dusting your hands off on bare legs before easing yourself to your feet. The bunch of your shorts and the shapely bareness of your feet fan the flame of my near constant arousal for you. 

‘’Do you ever get tired of fucking me?’’ I ask and your laugh sounds startled out of you. 

‘’The tiredness usually comes after,’ you quip, grin soft and sloppy before you frown at me, 'why?’’ 

I shrug, wrapping loose limbs about you as if I am bereft of energy before playfully clamping arms tight around your waist and lifting you high of your feet. 

You stare down at me, unamused and I stare up at you like the first human to ever discover the sky above them. Slowly I bring you back to the ground, dragging your body deliberately against my own. 

My hands skim up your neck to cradle lightly about your face and I could do this forever, touch you only ever with the tips of my finger like those renaissance paintings of men reaching out to press a single digit to the outreached hand of God. I can understand how they could never seem to bear the thought of another touch after it. 

‘’No reason,’ I sigh then giggle breathlessly as I remember the old boys in the ship yard,’ just tell me to dial it back a notch if you need to.’’ 

‘’Did you just call me old?’’ The mocking disbelief in your voice has me shuddering with laughter, bending at the middle with it before I follow you into the shade. 

Later when you are busy in the shower I sit at the table and write in your card, sealing it in the envelope and stashing it in my old testament bible in the book case, the one I had stolen from a down and out motel along route 66, before I met you. 

Once you are nestled into my side in bed, the bareness of our skin flushed to the touch I ask you what it is you want. 

‘’If you could have anything?’’ I reiterate and you hum, thoughtful and sleep as your hand runs through the garden of your curls. 

‘’I kind of miss having a dog.’’ 

‘’What about me?’’ I open one eye to glare down at you playful. 

You snort beautifully before replying, ‘’I already have you.’’ 

My sigh is a pathetic little love-struck thing and my heart flutters as wild as a bird in a cage beneath your palm. 

‘’What do you want?’’ You ask. 

‘’What don’t I want?’’ I repeat, thoughtfully. 

‘’That you don’t already have,’’ 

I puzzle over this for the longest time before rolling to bury my face in your neck. 

‘’I already have everything,’’ I whisper against your pulse. 

And it is a truth that leaves me weightless. Because in your smile I have the summer sun and, in your chest, I have the most cherished of shelters. In your hands that make a habit of tracing the black outlines of my tattoos I find the strength to keep you. 

‘’You're making the whole valentines thing really hard,’’ I laugh into your shoulder and as realization dawns on you I feel you shake with your own chuckle. 

‘’So that’s what this is about.’’ 

‘’Isn’t it always,’’ I reply smugly. 

There is a brief pause before you say, ‘’I made a valentine's day card once as a kid.’’ 

My hand rests lightly on the other side of your neck, grazing your jaw and as I close my eyes, I imagine the shine to your own as you tell me your story. 

‘’The whole school was encouraged to make one, that’s where I got the idea so I stole a bunch of supplies from the art class and took them home. Stayed up all night just to get it perfect.’’ 

‘’Describe it,’' I smile against the softness of you, feel the steady drumming of your pulse. 

‘’It was an anatomical heart, ventricles, valves and all.’’ 

We laugh together at this, the image of a little boy with the only real heart in the school. 

‘’I gave it to this girl, can’t remember her name now but I can remember the way she used to stare at road kill like it was art.’’ 

‘’How’d that turn out?’’ 

The tender giggling dies down between us as you reply, 

‘’terribly. Turned out she just wanted the normal kind.’’ 

I mouth at your collar bone in the silence and it feels thoughtful. 

‘’Will you make me one?’’ I ask, rising on an elbow to prop myself over you. 

You look up at me, eye’s morphing from playful to serious and then back again as you lift your fingers to trace the scar on my chin. 

‘’Is that what you want Matthew?’ you ask, ‘a heart.’’ 

‘’I want yours,’’ the words find their way out of me like a confession. 

The corner of your mouth curls in an almost smile and you look at me, truly look at me and see in one moment what it takes most a life time to recognize. 

‘’you got it,’’ you say and I hang from the promise like a neck from its noose. 

I wake you with a kiss against your temple and slip the card beneath your pillow before shucking on my cloths, making the coffee. That day will always smell like the earthy aroma of caffeine to me, will always taste like my words to you as you read them allowed. 

‘’To my friend, the only man I have ever wanted to name as such and I am blessed to call you even more, to call you mine.’’ 

At the bottom of your card, I had drawn the rough loop of two M’s interlocking like the feathers of a bird in flight. 

You look up at me then, eye’s glassy with an intensity that leaves my mouth dry before you say, ’you’re in love with me,’’ 

It sounds like a realization though you have known it all along, even when you denied it. 

‘’Since the beginning,’’ I confess. My voice rusted with emotions I still don’t recognize. Sometimes I just call the things I feel by your name because it makes sense to me. 

You rise out of bed like a spirit from the grave and rummage in the drawer of your bedside table, turning back to me with something cupped in your hand. Like a child with a butterfly or a candle flame between your fingers. But when you open them it is something much more breakable, I reach out and take from you the origami folds of your heart. 

‘’I didn’t think to colour it,’’ you say. And it’s true that it is as white as my skin against yours, as if it has been drained dry by the person who it had belonged to before me. It is then that I know the image of Hannibal Lecter that comes to mind is as much your thought as it is mine, though I am unsure exactly why this origami gift has conjured him for you. 

You reach out to the paper in my palm and pull at a valve until it looks like the organ still beats. I grin at you and your skilled fingers, marvel at the many strange talents that make up the man you are before me. 

‘’Happy Valentines,’’ you smile back, as fragile as your hand made gift. 

‘’My first,’’ I hum in wonder. 

‘'My last,’’ you reply, in the same connotation as a muttered Amen. 

You drive us to the college and we part ways in silence with the same secretive smiles between us. 

I linger around campus, spend time thumbing through wild life books and poetry in the library amongst the other strange and quiet kids. When I grow board of this, I find my way to the empty gymnasium, orange rubber floor beneath the squeak of my shoes. 

I had been good at basketball in my teens and I look up at the metal hoop with fondness as I slouch back against a stack of gym matts. 

I am lost in the silence until the heavy click of the fire door swings open and the spill of rowdy voices follows after it. 

The small group of people are barely men, some look fresh out of high school and I smirk at the clique of them as they break their stride by knocking shoulders and hurling taunts. They lock eyes with me as I catch the green-eyed stare of the boy in the middle of the group, fiery hair and sour lipped. 

He breathes out his laugh before striding over, his friends in tow as they trade knowing looks, sly little things like the foxes that circle the hen house. 

‘’Class is starting soon,’’ he says, stopping in front of me. I take in his tweed jacket and brown leather loafers as I lounge before him, un fazed by the energy that hums just below the paper thinness of his skin. 

‘’But we keep meeting like this,’’ the kid raises his hands about him, the others shuffling behind him. 

When it is clear I have no intention of replying the grin falls from his lips and I see the coldness there, though it is still humid compared to my own. 

‘’You seemed pretty interested in professor Graham the other week, you stare at him like the janitor eyes the barely legal girls in our dorm.’’ 

I simply flash him a bigger smile in response, the tips of my incisors like the wink of an eye. The little gang snicker in return, pointed elbows shooting out to jab at one another. 

‘’It’s kind of pathetic.’’ 

‘’So is hunting down where he lives and leaving flowers on his door step,’ I drawl,’ looked a little desperate to me.’’ 

There is a pause as their minds all race to the same conclusion, the boys giggling hysterically as they eye their own friend who flushes red, from neck to cheeks. 

‘’What the fuck are you talking about?’’ He snaps. 

I shrug lazily, content with watching him squirm as he drops the bulk of his ruck sack like a child slinging its toy in a tantrum. 

‘’No, really, what are you trying to say cocksucker?’’ 

‘’Pot, kettle, black,’’ I say slowly, punctuating each word and watch the boy’s blush turn a darker hue of red in his anger. 

It is because I see his punch coming that I am able to brace myself for it, to tell myself not to react. My head snaps to the side as the pain blooms across my cheek with the heat of burst blood vessels. I look back to the red head, trying to control the furious heave of his chest and I smirk as if he is a particularly funny joke. 

His left hand curls into a fist and he swings at me, this time catching my chin so hard my teeth chatter. My smile Is full of blood but no less joyful and I hear him growl low in his chest before lunging at me again. 

I am vaguely aware of the whooping laughter of the others dying down into silence as I am struck again and again, the boy before me aiming for a harder blow in a softer place every time. 

Soon my view is washed red by a split in my eyebrow, the torn bridge of my nose and I focus on keeping my own hands curled tight into the rubber mats. I close my eyes when I can no longer trust myself not to retaliate and as the intensity of each fist raining down on me implodes with pain across my face, I think of you. 

The way you had told me I loved you like it was never a question, how you reached for me in the mornings before remembering to open your eyes and shake off your sleep, when you trail your fingers over my sock clad feet every time you walk past me as I sprawl on the sofa. 

I hide from the violence in the peace of these moment, where my own instincts can never find me. 

I fall to my knees with the force of it. 

‘’Come on Troy, that’s enough.’’ 

‘’Yeah, stop man.’’ 

As I catch a kick, swift and heavy to my ribs I hear the others retreat and I am laughing as hallow and joyous as a madman. 

‘’You think this is funny?’’ The boy seethes, planting his foot in my chest to kick me almost onto my back. 

I look up in time to catch the familiar curve of your hand against the side of his face, causing his eyes to grow wide in panic before you slam him so hard into the ground he bounces. 

My eyes are on the stillness of your own as a crack echoes loudly in my ears, like a tree being snapped at its middle by the fury of a storm. 

Within the silence I look up at you, at your calmness that would appear empty on anyone else before our eyes both slide to the student on the floor. 

A small but rapid clot of blood starts to pool about his head and it is then that you seem to realize what it is you have done. Understanding swells like a bruise in the blue of your stare, your mouth parts slightly on a tremble that spreads like a live wire to the tips of your fingers. 

I feel a surge of energy then as if pulled from me by the rise of your panic and I stagger to my feet. As my hands curve around your shoulders to pull you to me, to avert your eyes from the body at our feet I feel you go boneless against me. 

My blood coats you until our faces are covered and our shirts look battle worn but still your eyes seem anchored to the kid whose skull had cracked open like a crab shell. 

I should be ashamed to say that, as I looked at you then, shaken and wide eyed as a doe too new to this world to see past its own fear, I could understand why Dr Lecter had loved you so. 

My blood looked like rose buds against the fairness of your skin, completely drained of your own and if I hadn't of been holding you up it felt like you might have kept falling forever. 

You were poetry to me then, Mr. Graham, as you always are but this was different. This was your love, a broken boy and the red smear of your lips as you silently screamed against my neck. 

‘’We have to go,’’ I pull at you, your shirt bunched in my grip and the sinewy muscle of your arm. I think it is the familiar lisp of my words that snaps your attention back to me as my mouth balloons with the swelling. You look at me as you did back when I had guarded you at night in the pit of the BSHCI, like you were trying to remember me. 

‘’Will,’’ I sound more insistent, the closest I ever get to frantic. 

Wills POV 

I don’t know what is worse, looking at the young man whose eye’s sit unseeing in the death mask of his face or looking at you, thick lipped and split open across your nose and above your eyes that hold within their depth the light of something considered beautiful. 

It is painful to look at you, in equal parts because you are as red and raw as a paper cut and because you regard me with the deepest of wounds, such is your tenderness. 

You are speaking to me as my eyes chase the way your lips pout around the words, inches from my own and there is nothing at all I understand anymore, least of all myself. 

‘’We have to go Will,’ you plead,’ I can’t lose you again, I can’t,’’ and the agony in your voice as it twists your face with it brings me back to the moment with all the intensity of a car crash. 

‘’Then we can’t leave him here,’’ I have to swallow around the lump in my throat just to get the words out, as if I am still choking on Abigail's ear. 

Once my words sink into you, I watch you search around us before landing on the mats and I know what you are thinking as if the thought had come from my own mind. 

You tear at the rubber sheet until it slides down to the floor and I watch you numbly as your fingers incircle the boy’s ankles to drag him into the centre of it. 

The sickness rolls my stomach into dry heaves as I watch the slackness of my students' body, the flop of his neck and the drag pattern of his blood. The scraping of his skin against the matt reminds me of the soft noise of bristles when we had painted the cottage walls a warm orange. 

You roll him within it as if you had once done this every other day and perhaps you had, hundreds of bodies and houses full of carpet that make up the life you had lived before me. 

‘’You need to grab the other end,’ you say and so I do,’ everyone’s in class so the halls should be empty, we’ll take him to the truck.’’ 

We shuffle our way through the building, you treading backwards as I drift between dissociation and alertness. A strange kind of death in itself. 

You drop your end of him by the tire of the truck as you fumble with the car keys, as steady handed as you always are and then you are sliding him into the back. If anyone had been looking at you from a distance, they would have seen a young man helping his teacher move some gym equipment, even if they had been nose to nose with us, they still wouldn’t have recognized the two sets of eyes as those of a killer. 

Though next to killing Hannibal it felt like bursting a balloon, the initial shock wearing of in time to help pick up all the pieces. 

You slam the trunk behind you and your hands are clenching at my shoulders again, grounding me with your touch the way circuit boards embrace a current of electricity. 

‘’I'm gonna go get some cleaning stuff from the janitor's closet and take care of the mess, I need you to stay here ok?’’ 

You catch my eyes with your own and keep them long enough for me to jerk my head in a nod and take the keys from you. 

Then you are gone and the weight of what I have done almost buckles me right there in the parking lot. I crawl into the passenger seat, slamming the visor with its mirror closed so that I don’t have to see the temporary body bag of the gym mat behind me. 

I don’t know what I had been expecting when I went looking for you but it wasn’t this. The rest of the class had settled into their seats but yours had been empty, even minutes after the bell had stopped ringing out and I felt your absence like the tug on a fishing line. 

It hadn’t been luck that I'd found you, not really. I knew what fear looked like in the faces of men now, no matter the age and the boys that had come from the direction of the gymnasium looked gaunt with it, the way some looked hounded by guilt. 

Maybe I had expected you to be the one looming over the frail and fragile figure of a body beaten so blue it looked black. 

Either way when I had sore you winded with a foot to your chest and a fist to your face, I had felt the river of my emotions run dry until all that was left of me was a body that belonged to you. 

I had crushed him under the wheel of my might as if he were no more than a butterfly. 

The break in your skin, the ebb and flow of your blood, the pained hiss of your breath and the way your eyes had bunched closed against the brutality of it had turned me from the comfort of my own humanity, into the bone collecting beast of a killer. 

Just because I hadn’t planned it didn’t mean I hadn’t meant it. 

When you return you smell like cheap bleach and lemons, your hands almost as pink and raw as your face. You look at me for the longest time as I stare out the windshield and into the wall of our future, a looming prison of bricks that beckons us back to it as if we never left. 

‘’We have to get rid of him then get as far away as possible, as fast as we can,’’ you sit back into your seat, palming the keys and your thoughts are so loud I can almost hear them. 

‘’I know where we can put him,’’ I mutter, barely above a whisper and it seems as if this is all you need. 

We peal out of the car park as I type in an address on the navigation App within your mobile with surprisingly obedient fingers. Then I am using my own cell phone to call the college. 

‘’Hello, yes, is this Super Intendant Brook?’’ I know it is, can recognize his voice but at this point it is as if I am working from a limited script, words I have said before that I vomit back up in hopes of sounding normal. 

‘’My Graham?’’ 

‘’I’m afraid a family emergency came up, I had to leave my class very suddenly and I couldn't really-’ my voice breaks before returning,’ I didn’t have time to explain, could you cover me?’’ 

‘’Of course,’ Mr. Brooks bites out his concern like a withheld breath,’ is everything ok?’’ 

‘’No,’ I say and of course it sounds as true as the colour blue,’ but thank you, I'll be in touch.’’ 

You let me stew in the aftertaste of my lies before saying, ‘’are you taking us to a grave yard?’’ 

‘’Hannibal Lecter was declared dead a month after I left the hospital,’’ I tell you,’ it was still winter and I was the only one there, in the end.’’ 

Then I describe to you that of which I have talked of to no one, not even myself. I tell you about the ground that had felt like rock beneath my feet, just shy of frozen. I tell you about the only company at my side of the hole that gaped like the yawning jaws of hell, how the priest had held his bible between me and the empty casket that looked glossy and black as the ink on your chest. 

I don’t mention the stark skin of the lilies I had cradled in my hand or the suit I had worn that had once made Hannibal look at me with a different kind of hunger. 

I don’t say about the way I had wept silently and without tears until long after the dirt had been settled and at least one hole had been filled. 

‘’What are you saying Will?’’ you ask softly, as if you have heard every unspoken detail about that day. 

‘’I’m saying there's a grave with an empty casket not far from Maryland.’’ 

Like so many of the things I tell you it seems to be enough and you only stop once during the two-hour drive, at a Walmart, and you pay for the shovel in cash. 

Matthew’s parks where Will tells him, tires spitting up gravel before the engine is cut. They hold between them the body of the dead boy, still encased in the gym mat and with the shovel balanced on top of him, they begin to walk. 

The night envelopes them in a darkness even the stars struggle to shine through, angry clouds hide from them the scarred yellow face of a half moon. In the distance the tips of gravestones reach out from the fog at their feet, the only sound for miles is the hitch of their breaths and the soft thud of their foot falls. 

Matthew is once again walked backwards, hands fisting the rubber as Will directs them forwards. It is a neat place; he can tell even through the covering of night. It reminds him of the mass graves that find themselves filled by war hero's, the kind he would see on the news, so perfect it looked fake. 

‘’Fitting,’ he mutters and when Will bothers to look puzzled, he says,’ this place is as soulless as the good doctor buried here.’’ 

He can’t tell if Will’s face darkens or the shadows from a tree above them colours it so. 

‘’He was buried in the Atlantic,’’ the profile replies, emotionless. 

Since Matthew had watched the brute force leave Will like the life from the student he had use it against, he had felt the continuous expansion of his own heart like the lung of a drowning man. It felt like another minute of the swelling in his chest might split him open like the hard shell of a chestnut until his eyes would then meet Will’s own and the feeling would intensify still. 

If Matthew hadn’t been obsessed with him before, across from prison cell feeding slots and blank gazes he knew that he was now. 

He could liken his love for the man like the fish that Jesus had turned into thousands just to feed the hungry. 

‘’Turn left,’’ Will instructs, out of breath around the body between them as he angles it so Matthew has no other option but to turn. 

He drops the head when Will drops the feet, looking to the headstone beside them as if he can see nothing else. 

It is too dark to read the headstone so Matthew asks Will what it says, for he is sure the man must know it by heart. 

‘’The state kept it simple,’ Will croaks,’ here lies Hannibal Lecter, 1961 to 2002.’’ 

‘'I love you the way you loved him,’’ Mathew mutters, eyes still on the head stone before trailing back to the other man. 

‘’Would you do this to me?’ Will asks quietly, referring to the shovel with the toe of his boot,’ would you refuse to let me rest?’’ 

In response Matthew takes up the spade and spears it through the earth bellow the stone, again and again and again. 

Will stands back and watches him, what little he can make out now as metal scraped dirt the way teeth glide against bone. 

‘'Where will we go?’' Matthew pants, taking a rest against the hilt of the shovel, large hand smearing mud and sweat across his forehead. 

He smells like the forest floor after a rainy day. 

‘’I don’t know,’' Will says finally, looking out onto the sky that slowly brightens bit by bit, as if he might find the answer. 

‘’I have an idea,’ Matthew looks to the horizon with him before continuing his digging,’ it was supposed to be a valentines thing.’' 

He waits until the older man is looking back at him before he says, ‘’I bought a boat, nothing fancy, just a two-man fishing dingy with a motor really...We could use that to get to the next coast before catching a plane to wherever.’’ 

‘’You’ve thought about this before,’’ the older man states and Matthew is unsure if he catches the bite of suspicion in his tone. 

‘’Of course,’ he replies,’ back when I was your orderly. I use to go home to my shitty little apartment and spend the nights imagining what we would do if one day you asked me to break you out of the institute.’’ 

He sounds so earnest that to Will, he seems infinitely younger in that moment, only a few years older than the boy he had murdered in the gym. He shoves hands that begin their tremors anew into the pockets of his jacket. 

‘’I was so hard on you about that man at the bar...and then I go and kill someone.’’ 

Matthew pauses in the midst of the hole he has dug, now knee deep and looks up at Will with no less admiration than any other time. Before he can reply the profiler is talking again, low and harsh. 

‘'Why were just letting him hurt you?’’ 

Mathew sighs and looks away, the ghost of a smile on his lips. 

‘’It’s as you just said, the man at the bar.’’ 

Understanding sprouts like fungus from dead tissue in the depth of Will’s eyes. 

‘’You...,’’ but he can’t finish his sentence, hand covering his mouth in a way so similar to Matthew when the man had let him free from his cage, all that time ago. 

Mathew, who never has any empathy for anyone else but seems to find an abundance of it when it comes to the profiler says quietly, ‘’i didn’t want you to ever look at me like that again, like you hated me. So, I made a promise to you, to never hurt anyone again.’’ 

He thinks he hears Will groan deep in his throat before dropping his hand from his lips. Through the chasm of dawn between them the older man's eyes look ablaze from within and Mathew thinks if he did not love Will he might have feared him, in another life and in a different time. 

‘’I never wanted you to be defenceless,’’ he sounds pained. 

‘’But I always will be when it comes to you,’’ Matthew replies, simple and sweet as a kiss to Will’s cheek. 

He doesn’t think the other man will respond until Will steps down into the hole Matthew was half way through making and reaches out to take the shovel from him. 

‘'Take a break,’’ he commands and it sounds like an apology. 

Will is a fast and determined digger, having spent a summer turning up ditches along the highway back in Louisiana as a small boy. Ultimately it is his thrust into the earth that strikes against something solid, the unmovable object and the unstoppable force once again at a standstill. 

He bends down to sweep away the dirt from the casket, breath caught somewhere between heart and throat as he uses the shovel head to pry at the lid. He stabs at it over and over, can still too easily imagine it is the man who the grave had been meant for, that he pries open with merciless ease. 

Something groans and cracks, wood splintering like the soft skull of the student in the gym and Will has to feel his way along the pine until his fingers find a gap and start prying. 

The lid yawns open like the mouth of a slumbering beast as it is disturbed and for a second Will almost expected the damp, sweet and sour rot of death before his hand brushes silk lining. 

He looks into that dark void and imagines himself falling into it, like slipping through a mirror and finding another world on the other side. When he looks up, he can make out the phantom paleness of Matthew’s face, the sky behind him more purple than black. 

‘’Want me to lower him down now?’’ The younger man calls to him. 

‘’Yes,’’ Will’s voice is hushed and brittle but Matthew still hears him. 

There is a moment of disturbed silence as he drags the body through upturned soil, until what little light there is becomes blocked out by the bulk of its form as it is inched towards him. 

Will imagines the litany of muscles in Matthews arms, bunching with strain as he tries not to drop the body, feet planted on either side of the hole as his legs are split apart above him. 

He thinks about how hard it would be to climb out if Matthew just left him, or fell into the open grave with him. Maybe down in the dirt and darkness of another love’s death bed is the only place left on earth where they could find peace. 

They could curl up in the splintered remains of the coffin and spend their days gazing skyward, describing clouds like one would discuss ink blots, pass the nights by counting stars and the many pit falls of the moon. 

It wouldn’t be so bad; he thinks until there is a body in his arms and it takes most of his strength to lower it into the belly of the casket. 

The mat slides away and even though it is still too dark Will can see the cherubic face of the dead kid, strawberry curls stained a violent red and lips that were once pink now a cold arctic blue. He will morph through every colour of the rainbow before he is finally reduced to the white pearl of bone. 

Will feels out his hands to clasp them together on a chest that is as still as the heart that already begins to wilt inside of it, straightens legs that have already started to stiffen and pulls the gym mat over him as if he were tucking a child into their bed. 

He closes the lid, ceiling him inside and he does not pray. He barely even breaths. 

‘'Carve out a notch in the dirt to stick your boot in so I can lift you up,’’ Matthew shouts down at him and so Will does, the pieces of mud that fall and hit against the face of the coffin sound like the beginnings of a hail storm. 

When will shoves the spade up towards a morning that has already begun to pinken at its edges like a raw cut of meat, he is suddenly hauled up onto the ground at Matthew’s feet. 

Only then does the exhaustion hit heavy as hate within his heart as Will is pulled to a stand. They are an abstract painting made up of earth, blood, sweat and bruises. No matter how you look at it, murder always feels like dying regardless of who lives long enough to never speak of it again. 

It takes Matthew minutes to fill the grave of Will Grahams victim, smoothing over dirt like raking the sands of a Japanese table top garden. 

‘’Let’s go,’’ Mathew whispers, exposed by a sun that rises despite their endless need for night and they begin their way back to the truck, no less heavier than when they had shared the child sized weight of regret between them. 

Mathew gets in to the driver's side and tells Will to try and get some sleep. The older man turns away from him, cheek resting against the wet slide of glass but he does not try to close his eyes, has no wish to escape when that is all they will be focused on once they arrive back at the cottage. 

Matthew takes Will’s hand and pulls him into the bathroom before standing him in front of the tub and adjusting the water until it is scorching, just the way the other man likes it. 

He peels the damp, soil-soaked skin of Will’s clothing from him, fingers skimming his flesh for just a second too long as they had when he had arranged him into strait jackets and hand cuffs. 

Will can feel his reverence like the sharp intake of a gasp against his flesh. Once he is naked, he watches, detached as Matthew strips too. The fine, sharp cuts of him are an artful arrangement of muscle and bone. He can taste the tension across his shoulders, feel the intricate arches of each tattoo like a church he had built with his own two hands. 

Then Matthew is pulling him beneath the downpour, pushing him beneath it first so that his curls flatten to the pink curve of his scalp. The younger man washed from him the filth and blood, water the colour of rust running in rivulets down the notches of his spine, the ropey contours of his muscles. 

Will looks up at him as he steps back, sharing the water as he shares his home, his bed. Matthew’s hair turns darker still beneath the spray, the swelling on his face like the waxy red skin of an apple. 

The profiler wants to touch him, light at first and then insistent, testing the give of each sore spot but he no longer has the energy to do much more than stand there. 

With one hand Matthew runs shower Gel over him and with his other hand he does the same to himself. All the while his dark eyes are soft and questioning, the black fan of his lashes catching droplets that hover like tears that refuse to fall free. 

In the end it is Matthew who leans into him first, seeking Will’s mouth with his own and the other man touches a tongue to the split in his lips. The blood there tastes like the breath of a wild animal. 

They pack in silence, small carrier bags full of underwear and two outfits. Matthew ensures Will he can whip up fake passports the way Stepford wives can concoct banana splits. He smiles at him even when the older man levels him with an unreadable look. 

Then he presses the boat keys into his hand, the way Will had handed his own set of keys to the cottage before pushing an old baseball cap down around his head. 

‘’I’ll need to go into the bank, empty my accounts,’’ Will mutters. 

‘'While you're doing that, I'll go get some food to stock up the boat,’' Matthew replies. They take to being on the run easily enough, the younger man as if he were no more than a two-dimensional actor in a b movie and Will far too empty of emotion to react to any of it. 

They are exhausted by the time they have their money and supplies as they stand at the docks and Matthew points out the small boat opposite them, rocking on the swell of the tide. 

‘'Black Vulture,’’ Will reads the name on the side of the panelling. 

‘’Do you know about them?’' Matthew asks, holding his hand out to help Will onto the deck. When Will shakes his head, taking from him the bags to later stow below board the other man explains. 

‘'When they mate it’s for life,’ he unspools the rope that anchors the boat to the dock before jumping aboard,’ they don’t just stay close during mating season, they are together all the time. Where one goes the other can be found nearby.’’ 

Will is familiarizing himself with the vessel as Matthew speaks, black panelled wood with pale cream sails. 

The past echoes within the present when he says, ‘’it’s both their weakness and their strength.’’ 

The ex-special agent slips the key into the ignition, letting it turn over for a minutes the way Matthew’s words churn within the basin of his brain before pulling them out of the harbour. 

It is a calm day, sun glittering against the waves as they slice their way through them towards the open ocean. 

Matthew explains that they have a full tank of fuel with an extra canister of the stuff downstairs in the cabin. He watches the way tranquillity slips beneath Will’s skin like a sedative, can feel the ebb and flow of thoughts that resonates the peaceful lap of water. 

Though he is still sullen and treading deep within the depths of his own mind and Matthew decides to give him room to think and breath by putting away the food and making up the bed. 

Everything is tiny, almost child size to him and he nearly slams his head against the door frame leading below deck to the small bedroom and bathroom. There is a kitchenet that consists of little more than a bench next to the breakfast table and a solitary work surface. 

But Matthew had been in motels that were considerably worse than the little boat and although he wasn’t tactless enough to ask just yet he hoped that Will liked it. 

He watches the older man from behind for a while, entranced by the steady ease in which he directs them towards the melding of water and sky that stretches out before them. 

Will spoke as if he had been aware of Matthew the whole time he had stood behind him, with the natural balance of a predator at ease on a ground that shifted beneath him. 

‘'It will take at least 48 hours to reach the next port, by then we should take off on foot...find some documentation and then lay low until we can leave the country for good.’’ 

Will is thinking of loose ends, the truck that they had left at the docks with the blood spatter of a missing college kid on it, his empty cottage with his curious neighbours that would pick up the lifeless gloom behind each empty window, the college itself and the boat yard that they had worked out, now abandoned with the rest of their life. 

‘’How long until the parole board notice you’re missing?’’ 

‘'Not for another four months,’’ Matthew sounds perfectly at ease, a different kind of comfortable compared to the numbness of the other man. 

Will just nods and Matthew wishes he could reach out and touch him already, press a hand to the rising bone of his shoulder blades as he palms the wheel but he knows Will well enough by now to understand that killing unsettled him more than anything, while at the same time grounding him to the man he knew himself as. 

As such the internal back and throw of this battle within him must be left to carry out its natural conclusion.... whatever that may be. 

A snap shot of the woman he had smothered comes and goes before Matthew’s eyes, the wet crush of her lips against the life line of his palm ghosting across his senses. But he brushes it away, as if batting away a cob web because Will is already angry and sad and everything in-between. It wouldn’t help to tell him though Matthew wishes that he could, just to show him that, though fools they may be, they are only foolish because of each other. 

If only that were enough to comfort Will. 

Instead, Matthew snatches up a newly acquired first aid kit, taking the small round mirror on its stand from the bathroom and settling down at the seating just off to Will’s side. As he sets to work on tending to his face, still broken open across his eye and nose he gives Will another truth, from another time. 

‘’After I got shot by that Crawford guy, I spent a week in the hospital, trying to come to terms with how badly I'd failed you. I led there as my shoulder did its best to patch itself together and I knew that my mistake had probably cost you your life.’’ 

He dabbed disinfectant across his wounds, relishing the sting of it. 

‘’Then I got escorted to county for a while before they shipped me off to Maine. I was already used to the routine, when you’ve been in one prison you’ve been in them all. When my trial came around, I was the happiest I'd been in a long time by that point.... I thought you might be there. Even if it was to testify against me, I would have been content just to see you,’’ Matthew sighs, small smile playing on his lips as if the memory is a fond one, though it sounds nothing but painful. 

‘’But you weren’t there, too busy chasing after your cannibal I was told and I thought, yeah, that’s just like you. So, I kept my mouth shut about your involvement, told them i just wanted to take down the ripper......Of course no one believed me but they had to pretend that they did.’’ 

The sound of Will setting the boat on autopilot, a subtle shift in the hum of the engine can be heard before Matthew finds him settling down across from him, though he keeps his eyes on his own reflection. 

‘’So, they shipped me back to my cell like I should be lucky it wasn’t death row instead though to be honest I would have welcomed that.’’ 

Will shifts towards him, taking the tape from his hand to pull away a strip and press gently over the sharp point of Matthew’s nose. 

The orderly drops all pretence concerning the battered image of his own face and instead watches Will, his amusement simmering into a quiet resoluteness. 

‘’I knew I'd probably never see you again and looking back it was really the only thing I found unbearable about being locked up. I wanted you more than I wanted my freedom.’’ 

Matthew seems in awe of his own emotions and the man that inspires them. 

Will's thumb strokes another butterfly stitch over the split in his brow and then he stays leaning into him, knee’s slotted next to and between Matthew’s as his hands drift down to the younger man’s thighs. 

‘’Why?’’ Will doesn’t sound doubtful, merely curious. 

In Matthew’s eye’s he watches the shift of thought and feeling, devotion merging into desolation before bleeding into fondness. 

The orderly raises his hand to play fingers across the pout of the older man's lower lip. 

‘’Because sometimes I dream of you in colours that don’t exist,’’ he swallows thickly as the skin beneath his digits tremor slightly with Will’s sigh. 

They stare into each other for the longest time, a sun set bleeding into the expanse of ocean they drift across as if the sky is little more than a broken yoke behind them. 

Eventually Will says, ‘'you likened me to a haunted church before, in the mountains of Romania.’’ 

Matthew merely nods. 

‘'We should go there next, to that place where no one else dares to.’’ 

The smile that spreads like a blood stain across the younger man’s face does little to ease Will’s guilt. Because of his actions a man is dead and Matthew’s life could almost be classed as over. He had been doing so well at his job, in his parole meetings and the modest home they had shared between them. It had almost been normal, for a while. 

Maybe if he were a better man Will would wait until they reached the next harbour then, when Matthew had gone to land to fetch more supplies, he would set sail and leave. But that was one thing he and Hannibal could always compare to each other and find identical, the selfishness of their own hearts far too alike in the end. 

They spend their first night onboard the Black Vulture fused together from shoulder to hip on the narrow expanse of a bed, far too tired to do little more than listen to the tender exhales of each other's breaths in the darkness.


	15. Chapter 15

Will dreamt of birds with feathers as black as blood, flying overhead in constant circles above him. Every time he would look away, out into a space whited out by nothing but a dusty blue hue and then looked back up at them, the birds would drop lower. 

Unable to resist breaking his gaze away to scan the emptiness of his surroundings he suddenly found himself beseeched by the dark mass of them, wings cutting across his skin sharp enough to draw blood. Once they were on him, they proved impossible to shake of and as he flung his arms out about him one of the birds, beady black eyed and razor beaked dived straight for the opening of his chest. 

It knocked Will back with the force of it, onto his back and he looked up, stunned at the other birds that resumed their silent loop of flight as the loan bird began to tear into him with talons and teeth. Immediately too breathless to scream, he felt the bubbling puddle of his life seeping hot as a hard on from the wound between his ribs. The bird drove its beak into him over and over until it glistened with his blood, the lump of shredded skin beneath its jaws swallowed and then left empty to rip away yet another piece of him. 

Will’s body shuddered and shook with the force of it, head jolting from side to side. 

He woke up to Matthew already having stripped them naked and resting between his thighs. He was still stunned and sleep weary as he pushed at the wings of the other man’s shoulders, felt the muscles there with all the resistance of a stone wall. 

Matthew took in hand both his wrists to stop his struggles, leaning forward enough to whisper against his lips. 

‘’I can’t wait any longer, I’m sorry.’’ 

But the younger man sounded anything but as he pushed Will’s legs into his own chest with hands now firm behind his knees. Matthew’s thumbs pressed into the strain of tendons there, one hand then disappearing to grip his own hardness and guide it towards the give of Will’s rim. 

The older man found himself truly awake when he felt the unforgiving ache as Matthew began to press into his body, like the point of a knife twisting into the very core of him. 

His legs shook with it as they both panted around the sensation of melding into one being. 

Will lifted rattling hands to curve around Matthew’s face, fingers pressing into the scar on his chin as he settled all the way inside of him with a sigh. 

‘’The way you looked when you smashed that kid's skull,’’ he shuddered and Will tried to ignore the sickening twist of his stomach as he pulled out to drive himself back into the heat of him. 

He cried out despite himself as the short and sharp thrusts of Matthews hips began to deepen. 

‘’You look so beautiful in the blood of others,’ he groaned as if pained by the perfection of it,’ almost innocent.’’ 

Matthew’s eyes were screwed shut in the darkness of the cabin as he pictured the moment Will had killed for him. 

‘’No one’s ever done that for me before,’’ he was suddenly wracked by a full body shudder. 

Will stared up at him with half lidded eyes between the frame of his own thighs. Despite himself and the lingering dread of his nightmare the heavy heat of arousal began to seep into his gut. 

Matthew looked like the most agonized of saints, thrown to his knees at the feet of a God as beloved as he was cruel. He rocked against him, the slap of his abs against Will’s thighs like the wet lap of waves against the belly of the boat. 

Will cried out as he surged deeper, harder, breath turning ragged and now faces inches away as he was bent in half at the waste to the point where his own knees brushed his ears. His legs slipped over the mass of Matthew’s shoulder to clutch at his neck, claves bouncing slightly against his tattooed back with every brutal thrust. 

Matthew stared straight into the glass pit of Will’s own eyes then as if he was sizing up his own death with nothing but loving devotion. 

‘’You were perfect,’’ the orderlies arousal slurred the words from his lips as he pressed them to Will’s own. 

Now to the hilt within him Will is reminded of the empty grave they had filled together, of waking to his own heart that felt pecked through and riddled with holes that fit every one of the orderly's keys that he would carry on a ring at his hip when he worked at the hospital. 

It is the sensation of being opened by Matthew, like a cage door falling away to freedom that has Will soaking them both with his own release between the cradle of their bodies. 

Matthew leans back slightly, hand smearing the semen on Will’s chest and stomach and other hand biting into the flesh of Will’s leg as he stares down to the give of his flesh, the way the older man's body swallows his own in greedy spasms that leave him reeling. 

‘’You-you should hate me for it,’’ Will stutters as his words are punched out of him with each needy thrust. 

‘’I’ve, fuck, I've never loved anyone more,’’ Matthew hisses, eye’s closing and head falling back as he fills Will until his insides are a weeping mess of fluid. 

Later they stand together at the front of the boat, Will pressed into the chrome railing with Matthew at his back in nothing but a bed sheet. 

The air ruffles his curls as he palms the phone in his pocket, the dim light of the screen cutting though the dark like a lighthouse in his hand. 

He reads the missed call notifications from Jack Crawford before resting his head back into the steel of Matthews chest and letting the mobile fall from his grip, watches as it slips through the water like the fading of a star. 

They reach Newport Harbour as the sun is just starting to bleach the world in the gold of a new day. Will steers them steadily into a free lane and parks them beside the large mass of a yacht, leaving them hidden in its shadow. 

Matthew had shoved their clothing back into bags while Will had paid cash for the harbour fee, making polite small talk about the types of fish that could be caught from the mouth of the bay. 

Matthew’s foot falls are heavy enough to cause the wooden slats beneath their feet to groan in protest as Will takes his bag from him while pushing his hat further down on his head. 

He does the same to the other man by his side, reaching up to pull at the tip of the cap in a way that causes Matthew’s ears to stick out further still from his face. He feels like laughing though does not trust it to sound remotely less sane than joyful so he tampers it down in his chest. 

The town has the distinct bustle of a fishing port, full of early risers in their tackle gear and wet proofs with the odd woman and their handfuls of fresh market produce in their arms. The two of them appear far too pale compared to the natives, who are as light skinned but of much rosier cheeks and wind chaffed complexion. 

They stride with purpose, as if they both know where they are going when if one were to look closer, they would see the way Will’s eyes are sharp in their hunting for a hotel and Matthew’s gaze jumps steadily in front of him before returning to the older man at his side. 

Matthew is a creature born from city dwelling, is used to finding comfort from unsuspecting buildings that blot out the sun and carefully constructed man-made parks. He looks at the quiet quaintness of village life and feels his skin tighten, as if the armour he had worn all his life no longer fit him. 

‘’How are we supposed to hide here?’’ He mutters from the corner of his mouth, around the forced smile aimed at yet another beaming faced stranger that passes them. 

Will’s own reluctant grin seems far more amused as he says, ‘’it’s just a pit stop.’’ 

The profiler suddenly stops, catching Matthew’s eyes in a way that clearly implores him to follow as he ducks in through the narrow wooden beams of a corner shop. 

Matthew shuffles behind him, not used to feeling awkward and out of place. 

‘’Excuse me,’ Will sounds relaxed and pleasant, the easy effects of a tourist, 'do you know where we can find a good hotel around these parts?’’ 

The old woman behind the counter is just as friendly as the rest of the town's inhabitants. She spends a good five minutes drawing directions for them on a napkin while describing the many perks of a stay at Hunters Lodge. 

‘’My friend owns it you see but that doesn’t mean I'm biased,’’ the women simpers, crooked and yellowed teeth peak through the pink slash of her smile. 

‘’Of course not, thank you,’’ Wil replies, pocketing the directions and pushing Matthew back out the way they came. 

‘’You're not going to keep acting like that in private are you?’’ the orderly sounds genuinely uneasy and Will can barely keep his smile from melting into a smirk. 

The lodge is beautiful in its own rights, cookie cutter and thatch roofed on the outside, dark stained wood with stuffed bears and elk on the walls once inside. Will is visibly relieved when the man behind the desk tells them there are rooms still available, though tenses up again when he asks about the beds. 

Seeing the other man struggle Matthew leans past him, catching the receptionist's eyes with the black glint of his own before he drawls, ‘’ One double should do it.’’ 

The man is professional enough not to flinch, merely offers a tight smile as he sets to counting the loose money Will had scattered about the counter. 

He takes the room key, turns down the offered assistance of a bell boy and propellers Matthew forward with a warm hand to his shoulder. 

They walk the narrow halls in silence, checking the numbers on the doors they pass before taking an elevator to the floor above. 

In the metaled enclosure of the lift, glass walls that throw their reflection back at them, Matthew slips his hand into Will’s to watch the way emotions flicker across the other man's face. 

Will squeezes the delicate length of his fingers as they splay across his knuckles and they look at themselves in the mirrors, one set of eyes dancing with an amusement like the hot glow of coals while the other withers hauntingly, as if hallowed out from within. 

‘’At least it’s not the honeymoon sweet,’’ Will sighs to himself once he has shouldered the door to their room open. 

Matthew glides past him, as gracefully at ease as is normal for him before dropping his bag by the bathroom door and bee lining for the bed. 

The floors are ash wooden and the bedding is tartan, a single tv pinned against the brick of a wall just above the sleek display of the electric fire. 

Will throws his own bag down beside Matthew’s before easing down onto the mattress the other man had fallen back onto, spread armed. 

He stares ahead of him for a moment, hands braised either side of him as his fingers rub slightly at the terrycloth. It takes a prying hand at his shoulder to get him to ease down next to Matthew as the younger man flattens him to the space opposite his body. Their feet hang of the end of the bed and their heads turn towards each other, regarding and searching. 

Matthew cups Will’s face and the softness of the touch makes his breath catch on a huff of laughter. 

‘’I still don’t know what you want with me.’’ Will whispers, eyes glazed under a sheen of fluid as if he could cry. 

Matthew returns the small smile before he is serious, his own eyes like the glint of a sleeping demon. He waits until Will falls into a soundless sleep before he replies, as gentle and as curious as his touch, 

‘’i want you to one day look at me like you use to look at him, when you thought no one could see you.’’ 

Mathews POV 

I order room service, a finger pressed to my lips when I open the door which makes the waiter smile, over exaggerated in his strides to remain quiet as he wheels the cart into the room. His footfalls are still too heavy to remain silent and I wonder how other people manage to survive when they can’t tread soundlessly through the world. 

He is young, shaving nicks across the skin on his face which flushes wildly when his eyes run across your body on the bed. 

‘’All tuckered out,’’ I drone, swarming close enough to his chest to see the sweat beaded on his neck and to stuff a few notes into the front of his pocket. It’s a tip and a threat, and together it overwhelms the boy enough to have him fumbling over himself to get out the door. 

People were just as boring as I remember them, weak natured and uncoordinated. Next to you, as that boy had been, they look like fowls. 

I sit propped up against the head rest, shirt discarded and jeans collecting toast crumbs as I swallow down bread. I keep my one hand resting against your neck, feel your pulse thrum beneath the layers of our skin. 

It seems to calm you, the way my weight against your back would sometimes be enough to keep your nightmares at bay. At least it used to be until you killed that kid. Now you wake up with shadows in your eyes, a scream in your throat before jerking away from me as if scalded. 

I ponder about love then, as I sit next to you and stare ahead at the blankness of the tv screen. 

The way it had made the toughest of men shapeless beneath its weight. I think of my father, though I had never known him I had seen pictures of him often enough to fuel my imagination. 

He had been a fighting man before he met my mother, I am told. A boxer until he had fallen for her but she had loathed the violence and judgment of the neighbours every time the law had come to darken our doorway. She had made him quit and find another way to pay back the debt in his name. Gypsies had taken it in blood, leaving just enough money for my ma’ to be able to pay for his funeral before the silken song of numbness had called to her from the bottom of every bottle 

As such the way I looked at love had been similar to the way some of the orderlies would look at the patients back in the BHCI, either in barely concealed disgust or a confoundment that belayed their own incomprehension. 

I sore it as a person who had bathed in the blood of his family the way children would play in rain puddles, before tenderly kissing each torn and twisted body beneath the hands that had personally laid them to ruin. 

This is not how I imagined it though. Your scent on every strange pillow that I rest my own head against and how it is enough to make anywhere feel like home. Your shoes side by side with my own, your shower Gel titled against mine in the bathroom, your sea breeze southern drawl across the echo of my thoughts. 

I think if someone were to cut you now, how I would be the one to bleed. How that’s just fine with me in the way weakness never has been. If I were to try and cut you out myself, I would only end up scarred for it, though the idea isn’t unappealing to me. 

I take the now flattened heart you had given to me from the pocket of my jeans, thumb brushing over a paper trail of veins. Eventually it will become scuffed and faded, as worn as the one in your chest. I am too scared to pull at its valve to make it beat in case I tear it in two. It gives me an idea though so I shuck on my shirt and slip a few more notes out from the wallet in your jacket. 

I take one last look at you, heavy limbed and face half obscured by memory foam before I drift out the door and into the hall. 

There is only one tattoo shop in town and it seems to be almost always deserted. It is next to a barber and equally as tiny as all the other stores. 

I inhale the scent of numbing spray and the same biochemical disinfectant that had been used in every psychiatric facility I had found myself in. I take a different kind of comfort from it, one that promises me a pain worth my while. 

‘’Can I help you?’’ an old skin head rests heavy against one of the leather tattooists' chairs, and I think that in this place he would be looked on as different. 

‘’I want some new ink,’’ I tell him and he nods, straightening and ready to toss me a book full of sketches and artwork. 

‘’No,’ I stop him in his tracks,’ I want this, as close to it as you can get,’’ and I hand him the origami fold of your heart like the timid passing of a full tea cup. 

The man raises an eyebrow as he turns the heart this way and that, ‘’sure, easy enough,’ he responds, ‘take a seat, kid.’’ 

Wills POV 

I wake up alone but am slightly less alarmed when I see the food trolley at the foot of the bed and a trail of crumbs across the sheets that I follow to the warm patch you have left behind, like Hansel and Gretel. 

Assuming you have gone to pay for the room service due to the slight upending of the wallet in my jacket pocket, I switch on the tv with the remote left on the night stand. 

Whoever had been here before us had left it on the news and I am in the middle of rubbing the rest of the sleep from my eyes when your name falls clear as a wedding bell from the news casters lips. 

‘’It is said that the young man, once an orderly at a psychiatric facility for the criminally insane before being sent to one himself for the murder of a judge in the city of Baltimore, is now at large after the suspicious disappearance of his class mate Troy Barrack and special agent turned teacher, Will Graham.’’ 

My mind is a train threatening to run of its track as she relays the details of our past together, barely covering our connection but it is hinted at all the same. I can’t understand how quickly the alarm has been raised or who could have possibly linked us to the events that found us in a strange town such as Newport with a new life such as this one. 

Internally I feel out of breath so when I hear the sturdy wrapping of knuckles at the door I spring to my feet, determined to grab you on sight and pull you back into the safety of my grip before we are to gather our things and sneak out the back. 

But as I wrench the door open, I am confronted with the man who had tried to kill you instead and it is as if some small part of myself dies too upon seeing him. 

I feel the tension deflate my shoulders from their hunch, leaving my arms to dangle at my side as I say as evenly as I can manage, ‘’hello Jack.’’ 

This is the moment where, if I was anyone else, he would be flashing his metal plated badge whist driving me into the wall with his shoulder. 

Instead, he merely grimaces at me before his eyes are shifting behind me, dark orbs rattling within the bloating of his face. 

My eyes are searching behind him as well and for a moment we are both assessing how much back up the other has, calculating the amount of force needed to conquer the other. 

‘’He’s not here,’’ I attempt to chip away at the tension between us. 

‘’Then where is he?’’ Crawford asks and his voice is so quite it almost sounds resigned. 

‘’I’ll take you to him.’’ 

‘’So you can ambush me?’’ 

‘’So I can say goodbye,’’ I bite out through clenched jaw, eyes pooling with a sadness that is not for you. 

Jack clenches his own jaw and I watch the way his hand twitches on the pistol in his jacket as he nods before holding out an arm as if to guide me. 

We walk through the warm welcome of the hotel, barely busy and I am aware how we look like old buddies with the way we stroll next to one another. 

It seems I am forever walking with enemies as if they are friends. 

‘’Where are we going?’’ Jack prods as we begin to make our way through the village. 

‘’The harbour,’’ I reply and it sounds like the word, ‘nowhere.’ 

We walk a little further, past the corner shop and into the town. I can smell the sweet scent of clotted cream and the vinegar of shredded bass from the stalls along the edge of the cannel. I lead him up the gentle incline of the bridge, the longer route because I need information, I need time. 

‘’What happened Will?’’ 

‘’What do you know?’’ 

Jack's sigh is part anger part exhaustion, neither one quite winning out yet. 

‘’Where’s Troy Barrack, is he alive?’’ 

‘’He’s somewhere safe,’’ I say and it’s neither a lie or the truth at this point, just filler for a story that has already reached its conclusion. 

‘’What happened Will?’’ Jack say’s slowly, with enough weight to sound final as if he already knows. But these tricks never worked on me, not when I had already learnt them all off by heart. 

‘’Not what’s being hinted at on channel 5,’’ I mutter. 

I can see the docks a few yards away, less crowded than earlier and I think this is fortunate even if nothing else seems to be. 

‘’Matthew didn’t take you against your will?’’ 

‘’No more than I took him.’’ 

Jack wavers for a brief second as I step onto the wooden runway of the dock but then he is behind me, hand still resting on a gun concealed into sheep skin and eyes lively with the promise of a trap. 

I think about how, one way or another I have always disappointed him. Then I think about you, stood across from me in a kitchen that doesn’t feel like our own yet as we pick at food from the fridge in nothing more than our boxers. 

The lack of guilt about my next decision doesn't surprise me, at least not in the present. 

‘’Enough riddles Will, time to start being honest with me,’’ Jack’s voice is the low rumble of an elderly man that can no longer summon the energy to scream at people. 

We stop in front of the black vulture as it bobs like a duck on the tide and Jack eye’s it before turning back to me. 

‘’He killed the boy from my class after he got jealous, it was no secret he was possessive but I-I tried to persuade him into using his brain for more positive subjects...He’s smart and I thought-I let him enrol in my class because I felt guilty about what happened before,’’ I choke on my own lies and feel no achievement at the way it makes me sound genuine. 

I can see the sense it makes to Jack because of course I would feel guilt, of course I would try to help. 

‘’There’s pictures of you together, not just rumours-,’’ Jack states, on the edge of suspicion. 

‘’Because we were together Jack,’’ I level him with a look that just falls short of carefully concealing my own regret. 

He stares back until the emotion bleeds through the dark brown of his eyes, a pity that is so bone deep it looks as if it might erode him. 

‘’I think I was lonely,’’ I say, barely above a whisper and I make my gaze un focused by thinking of Hannibal, so far now but so near as I take myself back to that night on the cliff with him. 

‘’Brown forced you leave your home?’’ 

‘’I agreed to leave as long as no one else died.’’ 

‘’Where is he Will?’’ 

I look up at the boat and Jack follows my gaze, looking back at me once before he pushes me aside and proceeds to swing his leg over the rope and plant his foot on the decking. I steady his arm as if I am still his friend, his faithful bloodhound, and not the man who simply wants him alone long enough to dispose of him. 

Jack’s eye’s meet mine as I stand on the side walk and he readies himself to stalk below deck. He presses a finger to his lips, face waning and serious and I frown, jerk my head and turn away as if I cannot look. 

I wait until I hear the creak of his boots on the steps leading down to the bedroom before I ease a leg over the side of the boat, planting my foot on the deck and pushing of it to land silently where Jack had stood and looked at me with the trust of a fellow comrade. 

Imagine leaving home to travel the desolate land of a country that rained down bullets, blood and bombs. See yourself trusting in no one because everywhere you look is a stranger that could take you from the safety of your trench and cut you into enough pieces to feed all the other enemies you fight, caught in a war neither side will ever have a change of winning. 

The only person you can turn to and talk to is the soldier beside you because they understand the fear, thick as the denial of the madness that is this place, the hell in which we try to fight nobly within. Then imagine turning on the only person you have in this place, and instead of a hand shake I meet you half way with a gun to your chest and that same friendly face looking back at you. 

Needless to say, it does not startle me when I wait for Jack to re-emerge at the top of the steps before I am swinging all of my body weight around the door frame and straight into the thickness of him, his cry of panic like the rasp of a curse that is punctuated by the sudden discharge of his gun. 

I find him on the floor, hunched in on himself in the small space between the bedroom and bathroom with a bullet hole in his arm that is starting to steadily flood the boards beneath him. 

I step into the darkness of this small space, each creak of the step that takes me to him is a subtle scream within the silence of lapping water and harsh breath. 

His gun has skittered away from him to the foot of the bed and I watch his eyes settle with a betrayal both unmistakable and unbelievable as he levels me with them. 

‘’Will-,’’ 

I cut him off with my sudden pounce as I land on him hard enough to feel the give of ribs like the snap of a wish bone. 

Jack’s breath sounds like the hysterical rattle of an empty cage as I press a knee into the dip of his neck, my hands an unbreakable chain around his throat. 

The anger that erupts in him is instant, legs kicking wildly as he strikes against me with his uninjured arm. But his weaknesses are too great and too many. I bare down on him with all my weight, until the blood vessels colour the whites of his eyes and each vein beneath the thick skin of his face looks as if it could burst with the strain of it. 

The life ebbs out of him like ink from a pen, in spurts and splatters as he twists and jerks beneath the brunt of me. 

My strength wavers once for the briefest of seconds and he uses the moment to draw in one last painful breath and say to me, 

‘’Hannibal.’’ 

His eyes are misfiring with the same alert aliveness of something that knows it is dying before once again growing dim. And I find it fitting that in Jacks last minutes of life as his brain fades to grey around the oxygen starvation at its edges, he mistakes me for the monster that he had hunted for so long and ultimately lost almost everything to. 

For in that moment, I too know that I am little more than the murderer of a man that should have died within the depths of the Atlantic. 

By the time it is all over I am barely out of breath and Jack is as still as a sheet covered corpse in the morgue. I leave him sprawled in blood and spit to crawl back up the steps on hands and knees, desperate still for the touch of the light. 

Matthew’s POV 

The ink that is seared into the skin of my ribs throbs with every step I take so naturally I by pass the elevator to our room just to feel the sting of it. 

The emptiness wails at me in a way that is instant once I am closing the door to our room, not even the sodden cling of my shirt to the raw edges of my tattoo can distract me from it. 

I know better than to call your name, instead digging my toe hard enough into the bathroom door to send it ajar and then it is undisputable. You're gone. 

But your clothes are still here, what little you now own still mixed with what little is mine and I imagine you at the bar downstairs, bored and slightly tipsy as you nurse your whiskey. 

I check each empty leather stool and pale expanse of marble work top with its tasteful coasters, I even check the toilets but you’re not there either. 

I wonder to myself as I am running through the market along the water's edge, if this sensation is what others would call fear. If it felt the same to others as it does to me, like the bottom of my world has just fallen through and thus starting the collapse of everything at its core. 

I am running faster than my thoughts and all lingering traces of pain from the blunt force of a needle seep away into the background noise of kids splashing at each other along the shore. 

I have sprinted from one end of this strange little place to the other and still there is no hint of you, no soft, bobbing halo of curls that fall onto the angular shoulders of my man and my martyr. 

With only one other place in mind, I take off again, hurtling towards the wooden slats of the dock. Only when I spot the see saw motion of our boat can I breathe again, so thirsty for oxygen the need nearly buckles me. 

I find you almost immediately once I take a running jump and land with both feet onto the light boards of the deck. The boat is thrown to its side slightly with my weight and it jerks you onto your hip from where you sit with your knee’s hugged to your chest beside the entryway of the galley. 

I catch the metallic tang of blood, sharp as the sea salt in the air before I see it already beginning to darken the knees of your trousers. When you look up there is a short spike of relief in the green glass of your gaze before they simmer over with a seal that looks lifeless. 

I am crouching down in front of you, a hand reaching out to you before I am aware of my own movements. Maybe for a nanosecond I try to imagine who it is you might have killed this time, though I could never care less as to why. 

‘’You ok?’’ I say quietly to your unseeing eyes and to your face as pale as sea foam. For a moment I imagine your valentine heart in my hand before the skinhead at the tattoo parlour, as white as my orderly uniform and as still as my own. 

My eye’s skim over you when it is clear you are somewhere else now, the usual motions of damage limitation like reading of a check list. Your pulse beneath the thin skin of your wrist a dim but rapid like the fleeting steps of a rabbit, the blood on your jeans isn’t yours. 

‘’Doll face,’’ I mumble as if to myself but your eye’s glint with awareness as they latch onto my own. I see you come back to yourself like a boy stumbling through a mass of strangers in search for his own kind. I hold my arms out to you, open myself so that you may fill me. 

‘’Come here,’’ and you half crawl, half limp into my chest as your whole-body collapses into mine. 

I try to hold you tighter, pre-emptive of the way trauma leaves you shuddering like an animal without its skin but it never happens. You are as still as I am and I try to smother the pride in me, I do, but it is the burning bush in my chest that cheers for your every triumph. 

‘’They know,’’ it’s all you have to say and I am sobering with all that your words imply. 

‘’Whose blood are you wearing?’’ I stroke your hair as if calming a horse that was once too spooked and fragile to be ridden. 

‘’Jack Crawford,’ you stutter,’ he’s below deck.’’ 

I pull you to your feet with me, brush a hand down the blankness of your face as I push you back onto the seating in the kitchen before I make my way down the steps to our cabin. 

The man that had shot me, and you for that matter, that had tried to shoot you again by the looks of it is already clotting and congealing against the wood. He is dead eyed and in just a few more hours he will start to swell and bloat with a weight nigh impossible to sink. I have no idea how to approach you with delicacy about the urgency to get rid of him but I know better than to show you my little smile as I retrace your steps. 

I see you struggle with him and the misfire of a weapon that by all rights you should have been petrified of but you had simply crushed the soft sponge of his air waves with the knuckle of your knee and hands...Or maybe you had throttled him...I can’t tell from the pattern of bruises on his neck. I’m not like you but I love you as if I was. The dance is no less beautiful in its simplicity and I ache to ask you for details though I am sure this would darken your mood even more. 

When I emerge at your side you are lost to the sea in the distance, like you use to be when you would always try to look for that doctor of yours as if it was the rest of us around you that had been the mirage. 

Will is slow to respond to the gentle hands of the other man as Matthew takes off his own jacket and wraps it around the peak of his shoulders. 

He stands on legs that have never felt steadier beneath the waves of ocean and blood at his feet. Matthew tugs at Jacks body until he is curled in on himself within the stall of the shower and then he shuts the door, locking it with a little key that he pockets for later. 

He loops an arm around Will like the drape of his leather coat as they traipse back to the hotel. 

‘’How long have we got?’’ Matthew asks. 

To which Will replies, ‘’We’re already out of time.’’ 

It takes seconds to pack their things, even less time to check out but at least the night has curved itself against them now, with all the comfort of a blanket. 

Will watches from the far edge of the dock, their bags in each hand as Matthew climbs back on board the Black Vulture. He sees him return to its side with the little canister of fuel at his hip, takes in the sight of him dousing Matthew’s hard-earned gift to him before there is the hiss and spark of a clipper in the dark. The low roar of the boat descending into flame reminds Will of a lullaby, it’s crackling creeks like the splinter of bone beneath dead weight. 

In the end Jack is given a funeral fit for a warrior and only then does Will feel as if he has finally gifted him his best. 

His eye’s wander back to Matthew who looks entranced by the fire, as if only just now catching a glimpse of something that reminded him of home. The way he looked at Will with that same intensity isn’t lost on him. 

They are in more of a hurry now, in the opposite direction of the sudden flurry of people who make their way towards their ship as it splits in two and begins to submerge. They hide within the excitement until the street appears empty enough to case out a car. 

Matthew picks the anonymous make of a Toyota, popping open the lock with the slight twist from the neck of a coat hanger he had taken from the hotel. Will slips into the passenger seat, notices how expertly the younger man hot wires the car, with an ease that betrays his childhood proclivities. 

They are already on the highway by the time the fire trucks arrive to stop the blaze spreading to the rest of the harbour.


	16. Chapter 16

‘’What did it feel like?’’ Matthew breaks the wall of silence between them. They have been driving for hours, long into the night and his eyes were beginning to feel pinched. Will had adjusted his seat back in an attempt to sleep but Matthew knew by the slightly uneven pitch of his breathing that rest had so far eluded him. 

‘’How do you think it felt?’’ Will counteracted, mood as stiff as his back from too long on the road. 

When Matthew didn’t answer the sound of the car speeding along the stretch of mountain road in front of them ate at the hush that had fallen around them. Nights were quieter this far from civilization. 

‘’It felt like trading away the last piece of my morality like a bargaining chip in a game that has already bankrupt me,’’ the profiler stated evenly, the calmness of his voice at odds with the anguish betrayed in his words. 

‘’Did you bet it all on me and lose, is that your latest problem sweet face?’’ the tension made its way from Matthew’s thin-lipped smile to his grip on the steering wheel. 

Will huffed out a laugh, both bitter and mockingly sweet, ‘’no darling, this is what I consider an ace in the hole. No home, no jobs and already wanted by 51 states...This is a jackpot for me.’’ 

Matthew doesn’t want to fight but they are both tired and hungry and always too close to take it out on anyone but each other. 

‘’Maybe you're just a really unlucky horse shoe,’’ the younger man quips, droll words to match the slight tilt of his head as his eye’s scan across tar mark. 

He looks up at the rear mirror in time to watch Will hunker his shoulders forward as he wraps his arms around himself, the blood that had dried to his knee’s making his jeans stick to his skin the way Matthew’s shirt clung to the ridge of his tattoo. 

‘’Is this about that whole guilt thing?’’ Matthew can’t keep the smirk out of his tone and it makes Will snap almost instantly. 

‘’Don’t pretend you know what it’s like to feel the emotions of the person you are slowly killing with your bare hands. Don’t pretend period.’’ 

Matthew keeps his thumbs hooked around the wheel as he straightened the rest of his fingers as if in defence. 

‘’Wouldn’t dream of it, we both know that’s more your department.’’ 

Will lifts himself slowly up onto his elbow and the look he levels Matthew is one of indignant disbelief. 

‘’I’ve now killed two people because of you.’’ 

‘’For me.’’ 

‘’Same difference.’’ 

‘’And you’re the only one making out that it’s something hideous.’’ 

‘’I killed Jack Crawford,’’ Will is as close as he ever gets to yelling. 

‘’You burst a balloon,’’ Matthew remarks snidely. 

‘’The entire FBI task force is now looking for us.’’ 

‘’Good thing the best agent they’ve ever had is on our side then, at least I hope he is.’’ 

‘’You’d be the one dead if I wasn’t,’’ Will mutters darkly. 

Suddenly Matthew is stamping on the breaks and swinging the car to their left down the dark and foreboding mouth of a back lane. Will’s eyes dart from the ghostly grey cut of the forest surrounding them to the cold mask of Matthew’s features. 

When they stop the younger man yanks at the wires hanging from the control panel to kill the engine and the only thing to stop the total encompass of odyssey is the tiny orange glow of the light on the roof between them. 

It casts dark shadows against the even darker pearl of Matthews eyes as he turns to Will. 

‘’Am I next Will?’’ he drawls and its sounds like the blurred lines of a temptation and a taunt. 

Will is a smart enough man to remain soundless though the fire in his own eyes rivals the monstrous flare within the other mans. 

‘’How would you do it?’’ he persists, spits the question at him like a curse. 

Will’s hands had been as still around Jack’s neck as they were around a fishing pole but now, they jump and jitter with a collection of shot nerves he is yet to feel. 

Before he can stop himself, he hears the distant echo of past words drift from his own mouth like smoke, 

‘’With my hands.’’ 

The flame that had threatened to consume the whites of Matthew’s eyes dies as instantly as if his insides had iced over. He if lifting the long, lethal frame of himself out if his seat to hover over Will like the slow crawl of foreboding up the older man's spine. 

‘’Would you kiss me first?’’ Matthew presses his face closer to breath his question onto Will’s lips. 

He tries to jerk his head away but the broad knuckle of Matthew’s hand stills him with a vice like press to his jaw. 

‘’Would you make me?’’ It is Will who sounds taunting now, daring edge to the glint of his stare. 

‘’What do you think?’’ Matthew growls before sealing their mouths together in a kiss that whispers of violence. 

Will is struggling as soon as the younger man is biting at his lips, hands coming up to bunch the leather around Matthew’s shoulders before shoving at him. 

The younger man brings his own hands up to trap Will by the wrists, his grip as crushing as the lower half of his body that he uses to hold down the rest of the profiler. 

There is barely enough room to move let alone fight and with each vicious shunt from Will’s knee connecting with the other man’s gut, Matthew feels his back crack against the glass of the dashboard. 

He glares down at Will as the profiler pants harshly with each chance he gets once breaking away from Matthew’s tongue and teeth. Will barely notices the hot press of their erections bound in denim between them because although he isn’t sure what it is he is truly feeling, it is good to release the anger and confusion into the body above him. 

Matthew is grunting with the effort to keep Will subdued, trying to ram their mouths back together while avoiding the threatening head butt he receives for his troubles. 

Condensation rolls in wet and heavy drops down the windows, soaking Matthew’s back until it runs from his neck to fall across Will’s cheek. The sight seems to harden the younger man, a focus falling over him as he sits back and sticks his hand into the bottom of his bag of clothing. 

He pulls out a hunting knife that he had managed to keep hidden from Will so far, if only because the older man never looked for it. 

Matthew watches the way the profiler's eyes widen just enough to take in the length of the blade before levelling him with utter blankness. He clamps his knee’s either side of Will, one hand splayed against the head rest by Will’s face as his other slaps the weapon into Will’s palm. 

They stare into each other, the loner and the leader, both of them deceptively tranquil beneath the dark oil spill of turmoil within pupils blown wide as supernovas. 

Matthew knows he is being manipulative but finds himself as uncaring as the prospect of dying on a back road to Canada at the hands of the man he loves, because this is love but it’s also war and he refuses to start playing fair now. So, he tugs his jacket and top over his head in one agile shrug, feels the way the fabric splits open the scabbing of the ink bellow his pectoral and wills it to weep in a way his eyes are un able. 

As Will’s eye’s fall to the bareness of his body Matthew grabs at his hand, clamping both their grips over the knife as he yanks it towards him, guides the tip of it to the perfect likeness of the origami valentine carved deep within his skin. 

He watches the way confusion furrows Will’s brow and it’s almost endearing before recognition colours the shamrock of his eyes to teal as he studies the new tattoo. 

‘’You're welcome to try it anytime you like sweetness but know this,’ Matthew leans in to the erection of the blade between them until old blood begins to work its way down the shaft, 

‘’ you won’t be able to stop my heart without destroying your own.’’ 

It is as if the tension hisses from Will like steam from the crack in a radiator as his eyes glisten and glaze with tears. Matthew can almost taste his utter desperation on the air between their mingled breaths as Will curls his fingers around the muscle of his bicep. 

The knife in his other hand sags until it falls away to the side of them, clattering into the footwell. 

‘’It’s only a matter of time before they catch us and-it wouldn’t be so bad if it was just what had waited for me before-an-a empty cell with empty faces-th-the red eye of each camera to track every wary minute of madness until my last breath...But this time they will take you from me,’’ 

Will’s breath shudders out of him, jaw working to contain the emotion and Matthew has never been more enthralled, more bewitched as he is then. 

‘’They will take you from me and I'll have the rest of my days to get used to the idea of never seeing you again,’ Will chokes out a laugh around the salt slick of his weeping and it sounds so close to the crazy they all tried to say he was, 

‘’ though it will never be enough because I could never imagine it, so how do you expect me to live it?’’ 

It was the most brutal way to learn that other people’s fear was indeed very different to Mathew’s own. It corrodes his endless wealth of fury and resolve as if the coldness of his soul were no more than an ice cube in Will Grahams whiskey glass and he is clutching at him then, cradling the older man’s face and planting kisses on every red welt left in place by his teeth only moments ago. 

Will claws at him in return, nose burying in Matthew’s neck and sliding past the slope of his cheek, the imperfection on his chin as the younger man nuzzles at his tears, collects them on the slightly ragged skin of his lips before licking them away again. 

The orderly pulls back only long enough to gasp, ‘’you don’t want to miss me the way I had missed you.’’ 

Will shakes his head against him, eye’s clamped shut and pained frown creating a map of anguish across his face as Matthew peals his shirt away with the efficiency of a man who had once dressed the non-resistant bodies of the insane. 

Mathew’s chest feels knotted at the sight of him and because he knows Will can already feel it, he takes his hand and presses the other man's fingers against the clot of blood and ink on his ribs, holds it there with his own fingers and it’s like holding the weight of the world between them. 

Will feels like a fool as his fingers brush the warm broken skin of the orderly's chest. He got so use to lying when exchanging pleasantries and recipes for cannibalistic destruction with Hannibal that he now finds himself unsure of how to respond to the honesty of Matthew’s devotion. 

Nothing is simple now as much as he had wanted it to be but Matthew untangles the mess of him with little more effort than a bird taking to the sky. 

‘'Wanna fuck me?’’ the youngers man's grin is sharp against his face and Will can’t help but bite back the beginning of a laugh until he is sobbing and snickering into Matthew’s lips. 

He nods once he feels slightly less unhinged and the seriousness of it all settles like a stone in his stomach as Matthew shifts to pull down his jeans. 

‘’You ever done this before?’’ he grunts through his fight with the denim until the milky silk of his thighs are exposed. 

Again, Will shakes his head, eyes as soft as honey as he watches the other man smile down at him. 

‘’I’ll help you through the first part.’’ 

Matthew pulls at Will’s fly, strong fingers easing him out of his pants and the cold air of the car feels like a caress against the burning skin of his erection. 

The younger man melds their mouths together as he rubs Will until his hips can’t help the slight twitches that seek a greater friction. Matthew dips his tongue past the swell of Will’s lips and they gasp around the heated slide of muscle against slickened inner cheek. 

A groan curls its way out from their throats and they share the sound as if neither can decide who it belongs to. 

When Matthew pulls away the glistening head of Will’s manhood brushes past his own and then settles into the curve of his backside and Will feels the spit in his mouth dissolve as he hooks his fingers into the seat either side of him. 

The orderly looks luminous as the moon, stretched over the valleys of the solid bone of his collar, hips and jaw as the flex of each bicep and abdominal muscle shimmers like the promise of poison. 

He reaches behind himself to lend direction to the throb of Will’s length and straighten enough to ease himself back onto it with more finesse than one would think possible in a car. 

Will’s mouth falls open, moan ripped from the nest of his chest and he tries to keep his eyes on Mathew’s face. 

The orderly's forehead flickers with tension before falling smooth again and he grits his teeth through the burn of his body being pried open by the first thrust of the other. 

He tries to swallow any pained sound that might escape him because he wants to give himself to Will in at least one memory that is devoid of pain. Just in case, Matthew tells himself and Will’s eyes flash with understanding as if he too can barely keep the thoughts of bars and tranquilizers at bay. 

Will feels as if he has been clenched between a rock and the hardest of places and for a second panics at what little room there is to move inside of Matthew’s body. But muscle melts around the thickness of him and what once felt like an unyielding fire now blooms over his foreskin like summer sap from a tree. 

The profiler reaches up to Matthew so that the other man is snagged on either side of his jaw and pulled down into the sloppy slide of Will’s lips. The tame movement jostles them enough to send arousal rocketing through each seam of their bodies as they suck down breath and gut-wrenching groans. 

Will never stops reaching for him once he has started, the silent demand for closeness never quite finding satisfaction. He claws at Matthew’s spine, the blackness of his sideburns, the tautness of his waste. His thumb flickers just below the beady black eyes, crow like in their glisten and the feel of Matthew’s lashes is one of the softest things about him. It is unexpected and another detail that leaves Will achingly parched for more. 

With a power that surprises the orderly into breathless giggles, Will flips them as if an ocean wave that upends countless boats with little more than the curl of its current. 

It feels like making love to a storm, Mathew realizes, in the way he cannot catch his breath fast enough before it is snatched away by the other man’s mouth, cannot hold the busy eye’s that rake over him as if cataloguing every weak point. 

Will drives himself into the body beneath him, unconcerned by the pained little gasps Matthew makes because the man had taken a bullet for him in the very same fashion, he takes Will’s body into his own. 

Matthew unfurls with the pride of it, neck stretched long like a cat in the sun even as each brutal thrust punched from him the shaky breath of his belief. 

Will slides into the only space left to him, tasting the pulse in Matthew’s throat and feeling out each tendon stretched tight enough to snap. 

The position ensures that the profiler’s stomach brushes evenly along Matthew own erection and the tension bleeds out of him like the life from the eyes of every victim he had bothered to watch die. 

His hands clutch at the brine like shine of Will’s shoulder as the damp hiss of their hips connecting fills their ears. 

It is when Matthew feels the blunt puncture of Will’s teeth sinking into the pressure point of his throat that his groin knots in an ecstasy that is agonizing, his orgasm like the rupture of an organ, his release like the sudden spurt of arterial spray. 

From beneath the needle like numbness of overstimulation Mathew can feel the final jolt of Will’s body from within his own and the other man deflates against him as if his own completion had proved fatal. 

It’s beautiful in a way that only the collapsing of stars can be. 

Will insists on driving them into the next day, receptive to the burning pain at the base of Matthews spine after having found himself in such a situation almost every night after that long ago Christmas morning. 

Matthew sleeps soundly next to him, a hand curved over the jut of Will’s knee as he drives them through more winding peaks of back roads. 

As they pass a white picket sign with the name Vancouver in elegant green scrawl across it, Will’s eye catches the crystal shine of a lake at the end stage of unthawing. They are high up enough in the mountains to be able to reach out and run a hand through the mist, some patches of grassland still dusted with snow. 

Along the river is a thicket of cabins and behind that runs a forest as deep as it appears to be wide. The darkness in-between each tree trunk seems as endless as the night of Matthews eyes that flicker just behind the soft webbing of his eye lids. 

Will pulls into a parking lot just off from the beginning of the trail and he can already feel the ice of the water from ankles to shins that filters through the thick rubber of his water proofs. 

He takes Matthew's hand from his knee, raising it to his lips and kissing his knuckles, his eye’s still scanning the peaceful scenery from the window as if he is waiting for the gap between each tree to fill with the shadowy forms of FBI agents. 

Matthew hums as the older man's touch pulls him up from the under-surface haze of sleep. 

‘’We here?’’ He yawns, hard blinking at the spill of natural light reflected from snow peppered mountain tops. He goes to jerk himself upright and catching himself on a hiss of pain decides to go about the process of sitting more gingerly. 

Will gifts him a small smile, thumb smoothing circles into the dip between Matthew's thumb and finger. 

‘’We’re in Canada,’ the older man announces, gaze still alert as his search for anything off putting,’ thought this place looked homely.’’ 

Matthew’s hair was ruffled like wind chaffed feathers but his eyes were just as responsive as he absorbed the fire glow of each wooden home. 

‘’I’ll go talk to the manager in the lodge, if I'm not back in five minutes don’t forget to bring the hunting knife when you come looking for me,’’ Will said, tone as stark as steel. 

Matthew simply nodded and watched the other man as he slammed the car door behind him and disappeared into the entrance of the bigger cabin, perched on the large rock face of the mountain in front of them. 

Mathew’s POV 

You come back to me with a key to a cabin in hand and the ghost of a smile on your lips. We haul are bags down to the furthest one from the end, velvet blue drapes in the window and I try to swing my hips around the pain in my spine as you hold the door open for me. 

It’s small but spacious and reminds me enough of our cottage for it to feel more like a vacation home rather than a rest stop with a view. 

You drop your bag next to mine by the log burner and I watch you curse as it spills over, clothing and cash tumble like the vomit of visceral across the floor. I fall onto the bed, nose pressed into the auburn bedding as I hold a hand out to you in a silent command for you to come to me. 

I feel you place your fingers around my own, warm and calloused as you sink down next to me after pulling the boots from my feet as if am an exhausted child. 

I turn my face to you, to watch you look at me as if I am beautiful and deadly and yours. 

Though your death count is close to surpassing my own and it shows in the way the blood that has crusted around the skin on your knees no longer bothers you. 

‘’Tomorrow we can head into town, find ourselves what we need to make our passports,’’ I slur against the covers. 

You nod, eyes now pulled to the mist along the windows and it’s painful to watch you waiting for our time to come to its end, after all of yourself that you have sacrificed to it. 

‘’For now let’s bathe, my thighs are gonna end up glued together otherwise,’’ and this makes you smirk as I pull you up from the bed and into the bathroom. 

You busy yourself with staring into the mirror as you run a razor over your stubble, touch feather light across the seam of your scar as I fill the claw tub. 

We strip in the steam and the silence, eye’s roaming over the ink and the blood and the bodily fluids that bind us together like the fine webs of a dream catcher. 

I ease myself into the bath first, the long arks of my legs as tight as is comfortable against the metal sides as you settle in-between them, your back to my chest. 

It is gloriously cramped, no spaces between us as I hang a hand over the rim and listen to the drips from each finger gather themselves into a puddle on the tiles. The other hand I bring up to brush the curls back from your forehead, take note of the spider thin scar there, as I always do, and you let you head rest in the crook of my neck. 

‘’Why did you get that tattoo?’’ You say eventually, voice echoing like a rock skimming its way across the water. 

I hum in thought even though I don’t have to think about it at all, I knew with the same kind of certainty that I know of you. 

‘’The same reason you killed your old boss,’’ 

I count five of your heart beats through your spine and into my rib cage before I hear you mumble. 

‘’You wanted to keep whatever parts of me you could.’’ 

‘’Forever,’’ I vow. 

‘’Sounds like a proposal,’’ you snort softly. 

‘’Maybe it is,’’ I shrug, eye’s closed but full of you all the same. I can see you on the darkness of my eyelids, pink tinged skin with your thousand-mile stare. 

‘’for a wedding or a funeral?’’ 

‘’We could do both.’’ 

You sigh deeply as if elated and pained and I slip my hand over your chest to rest there. 

‘’Or neither, just...,’ I lift your fingers up from the water and lay kisses on the pruning skin, ‘anywhere you go, let me go too.’’ 

‘’I'm sorry, about earlier in the car. I’m usually more adept at being an outlaw.’’ 

I laugh at you because to me you already seem like an expert at most things, being on the run is no exception and because I trust in you like no other compass or map to take us to wherever it is we are supposed to be. 

‘’Don't be sorry, you’re sexy when you’re mad,’’ I smirk into your hair, my gentle teases and your timid regret lending a lightness to the mood I have not sensed since you stopped wandering the shore line. 

‘’You should see me when I'm delusional,’’ you quip and I am snickering into your skin as I try to imagine just that. 

The way you use to be, flushed, hot skinned and hotter eyed with the breath of a nightmare always caught in the fine little hairs on the back of your neck. You use to tremble in your bunk the way you do underneath me and somehow, even back then I always knew that this was how it would be. 

I remember thinking that you looked like you were on fire within and how I longed to reach through the bars and touch you so that we may burn together. 

When we finally get out, both of us wrapped in the cotton of the towels that had been provided you dared to approach the ancient tv on its stand in the corner and switch it on. 

We watch the news with bated breaths and only stretch out next to one another to close our eyes once we’ve seen a full news round without any mention of us. 

I never usually dream but that night I can remember the bottomless darkness all around me as I fell through layer upon layer of nets soft as silk. 

They wait for a day that is cut down its middle with rain and overshadowed with storm clouds before they venture into the city. Will explains that weather like this is better to hide in, with their hoods pulled low over their hats to cover their faces. 

They stop at the check in cabin to borrow an umbrella to skulk beneath in order to shy away from the security cameras on the high streets. 

Matthew grins at Will knowingly when he sees the name the man had used to sign the guest log. 

Mr. W and M Vulture. 

Over an hour later they return with enough supplies for Matthew to make their passports, a bottle of blonde hair dye and a bag full of instant noodles. They had also grabbed more boxers and clothing from a charity shop on their way back to the car. 

‘’We should ditch the Toyota soon, it’s bound to be reported as stolen by now,’’ Mathew says distractedly, eye’s running over the bottle of peroxide instructions. 

‘’I don’t think changing the colour of your hair is going to help,’’ Will mutters in response, chewing absentmindedly on his ramen as he hunts through each news channel. 

‘’They say blondes have more fun though,’’ Matthew smirks at him. 

‘’You're already enjoying this a little too much.’’ 

Matthew rises gracefully from the floor, their photo IDs forgotten, laying side by side like the blank faces of their mug shots. 

He moves to curl himself around Will who now sits perched on the end of their bed, one leg gracefully swung around the back of him until Matthew is slotted to his back, arms circling his stomach like the tight pull of his scars. 

‘’Thanks, by the way,’’ the younger man breaths into the side of his curls, chin resting in the dimple of his shoulder. 

‘’For what?’’ Will stretches away from him, just enough to dumb his empty carton of noodles onto the side table before setting back into the shelter of Matthew’s body. 

He laughs, low and light into his ear as if marvelling at him, the way he always seemed to be slightly giddy within his own awe. 

‘’As if you don’t know,’’ Matthew drawls, sounding pleased and lethargic as his lips skim his neck. 

‘’I don’t,’’ Will swallows, hot and heavy in his arms. 

‘’For the way you make sure that everywhere we end up always has a fire.’’ 

They are quiet for a moment, the news presenter in the background filling their space with descriptions of a killing spree by some other monster who fancies himself a man. It feels like being sang to sleep, leaving them loose limbed and content. 

‘’You look at the flames like you look at me,’’ Will whispers eventually, eye’s drawn to the log burner that has yet to be lit, where he knows the younger man is staring. 

Matthew’s hands run over him, fingers barely dancing across his stomach and up to his chest where they find the place Will’s heart beats strongest and fold over themselves there, as if ready to start resuscitating. 

‘’Like I love it’’ Matthew states, his voice as thick as whiskey. 

Will lets his head fall to the side against the mouth being pressed over his throat as he nods, eyes falling closed and jaw bunching when those hands work their way under his sweat shirt. 

Matthew thanks him for many more things throughout the evening. 

He thanks Will for the home they had shared when he got out of prison, his first one, as he pulls him from his clothing like the careful fingers of a child pulling at the wrapping of a present. 

He thanks Will for the way he clings to him in his sleep, fingers digging hard into the muscle of his back and the way the sensation pierces straight through his dreams of nothingness, where he is so often alone until the fish hook tugging of nails on his skin, and as he says this, he demonstrates by burrowing his own fingers into the soft give of Will’s sides. 

He thanks him for the way Will waited for him and when the older man goes to argue he kisses the protest away and tells him about the way people wait for things they’ve never even known or met, how Matthew had been waiting for Will his whole life before he knew that the other man existed and he buries his conviction into the tight press of Will body, along with his own. 

On each sharp rock into him that drives from Will such desperate moans, Matthew thanks him for the way his eyes soften around the edges when Will looks at him, as if he is the fire that melts the older man where he stands, for the parts of himself he has given away in order to keep Matthew with him. 

Sweat rolls from their skin like thunder through the sky as their hips still against each other, trembling and beaded like the most fragile of flowers in the morning dew. 

‘’And thanks for the heart,’ Matthew croaks against Will’s collar bone once he has caught his breath,’ I always wanted one.’’ 

When he lifts himself on his elbows to look down into Will’s own eyes, they are full of darkness and gratitude, so much like Matthew’s in that moment, it is like looking at his reflection. 

He smooths a thumb over Will’s brow and the gesture feels like falling to his knees in worship, like he can barely contain the song of his heart that beats in time with the other’s. 

‘’It looks good on you,’’ Will whispers, looking right into Matthew, to things the man himself can’t see but shine back in the older man's eyes like fireflies ghosting across black glass. 

Matthew kisses Will until his eyes close around the image and then settles his lips with the softness of moth wings against the thin-skinned lids, until his breath runs smooth from each left-over shudder and his limbs turn leaden with sleep. 

Matthew waits until Will’s breathing deepens before slowly pulling himself away from the heat of his body, moving within the darkness of their cabin to tug on his cloths and slip into the night. 

It is cold enough for his breath to form like smoke past his lips and he rubs at the thickness of his biceps once in the driver's seat of their stolen car, urging the ice from his skin. 

The roads are mostly deserted this time of night, something Matthew had been counting on and drives no more than a mile before he spots a park with enough woodland to ditch the car in a banking almost blacked out by shadow. 

The walk back towards their cabin, down the stretch of road he had just travelled reminds Matthew of the highway to get to Wolf trap back in Virginia. Though there is no snow the grass on either border is white and crisp with a frost that sets everything to a glimmer. 

Matthew slides uneasily for a second over a patch of frozen motor oil before recovering quick enough to steady his stride, hands now taken from pockets to hang at his sides just in case he needed to catch himself before a fall. 

He is thinking of pressing his hands, like sheets of ice against the liquid heat of Will’s body when two headlights appear towards the end of the road. 

They look as dim as something dying in the distance before the car steadily approaches and then the light is blinding. 

Matthew holds a hand up to shield his eyes, still walking on steadily and it isn’t until the vehicle stops no more than an arm's length away then, so too does he. 

He can’t help the slight amused smile as he imagines a lost traveller summoning up the courage to ask him for directions when he only just knows the way to get back to Will. The idea of killing the tourist dead and stealing their car trickles through his thoughts like pus from a wound. 

A figure gets out, with the height and frame of a man though Matthew struggle to see through the white cut of the headlights to make out much else. 

He is but a dark shape that approaches the orderly with calm, steady steps and it is the surety of his movements, the confidence in which this person roams through the dark that has Matthew frowning. 

He is already far too close by the time he can make the stranger out as his figure blocks the glare from the lights and his features are illuminated within the background of the night. 

Not a stranger after all. 

A hand, like the cold grip of death cupping his jaw wakes Will from a dead sleep. It Is still dark and he tries to blink away the blur from his eyes as he looks up into the face of the one who had woken him. 

He expects to see the dark beads of Matthews eyes in the pale moon of his face, so when the shapes form themselves into something too soft and sharp in the wrong places it takes a moment for his mind to understand. 

The maroon irises are locked onto his own, sea blue, with the familiarity of a well visited nightmare. He feels his heart fall into the pit of his stomach before the reality of who he sees above him can set his mind to working again. 

‘’Hello Will,’’ Hannibal lilts, sombre and accented and as familiar as every moment they had shared before Will had killed him. 

Before he can think of either response or reason, he catches the cruel shine of a needle within the dark and then Hannibal is plunging it into the muscle of his neck, right beneath the place Matthew had pressed each grateful kiss. 

It is the last thing Will can recall thinking before the pull of a sedative drives him into the silence of a place both baron and black.


	17. Chapter 17

Will can hear the elegant grind of violin strings before he can see. When his eyes do finally focus, the blur receding like the tug of unconsciousness everything black is plummeted to white. 

The bed sheets around his body, the walls around the master bed he situates, the sky outside. It all bares a blankness that for those uncompromising seconds of confusion feels unbearable. 

‘’Matt?’’ He tries to call out but his voice falls rusted and brittle into the mass of white nose around him. 

But he remembers Hannibal, he knows why he is no longer at the cabin with the orderly moulded to his side. Will tries not to take notice of how cold an empty bed feels to him now, the way others who woke up in Doctor Lecter's care tried not to notice their missing limbs. 

Will turns his head too quickly in trying to glance through the doorway to his right and vertigo churns violently with the anxiety in his gut. 

He lets himself fall back against the pillows that had been plumped and propped against him with a care that is both professional and intimate. Defeated before he has yet to try. 

He only realizes there is another door within the room once it is swinging open, a tinkering of metal and china follows the sound of its creak. 

Hannibal appears to him, at first out of focus before Will is blinking his image into contrast. 

He looks untouched by time, indifferent to the nose dive he had taken into the cold Atlantic. His hair is more ashen than not now, though it still sits slick and perfectly combed across the fine bones of his skull. 

He wears a suit that runs in black and read like the intricate pattern of tartan Will had always preferred on himself and the profiler knows instantly that it is a design that had been chosen for him, like everything always had been. 

In Hannibal’s hands are a tray and he holds it in front of him as he approaches Will’s bedside, as if to demonstrate the safety of the other man by presenting him with hands otherwise occupied. 

‘’How are you feeling?’’ His voice is wood smoke as he sets the tray down on the bedside table, perfunctory bend at his waste like the bow of a servant before straightening. 

Will can find no words to describe it. 

Hannibal seems to know as much and the smile in his eyes, like the rich brown of blood socked soil is the only light left inside of him. 

‘’That bad?’’ 

He reaches out to press the back of his hand to Will’s forehead as if he still suffered from the fever Hannibal had worked so hard to induce. When the other man jerks away as if scolded the doctor rises to his full height, hand falling back to his side as if useless. 

Their eyes have been locked from the very moment they had met only now their bodies are as still as their gaze. 

Will’s face barely twitches with the tail end of emotions that flare through his irises, like the wisp of phantoms. 

Hannibal watches his feelings given birth within those endless blue depths before dying of within the hard swallow of his throat, his own face like the frozen surface of a river. 

But beneath Will knows he rages. 

To Hannibal the younger man is also far too similarly unchanged by time. The translucent bunching of the scar across Will’s cheek is the only indication that there had been any changes at all and he follows the path of that wound as he would across the Milky way in the nights sky. 

He breaks the moment to describe the rose tea left steaming in the china pot beside its matching cup. It fills the air with an aroma of sweet wilt and rot. 

‘’Why are you here?’’ Will interrupts, his voice sounds as if it had escaped from a jagged hole within his chest. 

Hannibal grows stiller until it seems as if he does not breathe, eye’s skittering from the tea pot back to Will. 

When he answers him, the worlds roll within a breath let go of. 

‘’Where else would I go?’’ 

And the softness in Hannibal’s tone cuts through Will far deeper than blade or bone saw. 

Beneath the fog of sedatives Will is sure he can feel and hear a splintering, like the disintegration of a soul that is more glacier than glass, like the buckling of a belief to leave him with a thought that had only ever been wishful and weak. 

Hannibal watches him come apart from within and hungers still to peel away all that is physically Will Graham so that he may lap at the wound beneath the blood and bone of him. 

‘’I shall leave you to your rest,’ he says instead, turning back to Will before slipping through the door to add, ‘dinner is at six.’’ 

Matthew POV 

I open my eyes to a darkness that is empty of you and everything else. I hear the chains and their metallic clink, like the softest of toasts made by a sea of wine glasses before I feel them, connected to the steel band around my neck. 

I draw my feet up beneath me and find them bare, as freezing as the rest of me against the concrete floor I had been splayed against. 

I run my hands along the thing I am chained against, picture the bigger bottom dome of a coal furnace before I can stretch no more to follow its long neck. 

Your doctor had been the last thing to see, seared into my mind before an acute pain had started in my leg and laced through me like the shock at having stood face to face with him once more. 

I had reached down to pull the needle from my skin, imbedded up to its plunger but doctor Lecter had reached me first. 

As he slipped a hand to my shoulder like a friend would console their fallen comrade, before I could demand of him to tell me what this meant, he had driven me down into the rise of his knee with a single shove to the back of my head. The knife I had taken from my pocket to clutch in my hand, the one you had levelled at my chest in the car, now falls soundless as snow to the road. 

I had thought that I had outlived him and therefore any threat of revenge and I had been wrong, although it is not myself, I fear for. I clutch at the heart bellow my breast in the windowless room of darkness and I think of you. 

Hannibal finds Will still in bed when he returns to take him downstairs for dinner. He looks as if he hasn’t moved, pale as a bloodless body beneath a thin sheet of moonlight and chemical sweat. Although he does not tremble and that surprises the doctor in the most delightful of ways. 

He wears the same suit, red plaid and black pocket square, in hopes that Will might be convinced to change into something more substantial than his thin thrift shop jeans and sweater. 

‘’You always did waste too much effort on the window dressing of your meals,’’ Will replies, sounding equal parts dark and disinterested. His eyes seem fixed on the moon that bathes him in a glow which bleaches him of pallor. 

Hannibal, content to enjoy a quiet moment at his side decides to seat himself on the bed just out of reaching distance, eyes fixed on the same place. 

‘’Presentation has always been important to me. I find it gives shape to the story in which I want to portray.’’ 

‘’Shall I tell it for you,’’ Will cuts through his narrative, voice as soft and harsh as his stare. 

Hannibal closes his mouth with the barest clench of his jaw that would look like anxiety on any other person. 

Will takes it as an invitation to continue. 

‘’The story of two men who left to fight a dragon,’ maroon eyes hold steady against shamrock orbs framed with lashes like the gentility of a dear,’ and how the one man thought he had lost his love to the sea after he had worked so tirelessly to put him there. How he crawled out of sea mist and sea weed as alone as the day he was born and no better for it, not really.’’ 

‘’And each step away from those shores left him more haunted than the life he had lived beside the very man he had loved and then drowned. He didn’t think there was anything left to do but die himself,’’ Will stumbles over the bitter huff of an almost laugh, the irony of each memory sinking deep as venom into his veins. 

‘’Until another man came along and although he wasn’t someone new or better...He was different.’’ 

Hannibal’s breath hitches when he hears the tenderness in Will’s tone, made soft around the unspoken name of the orderly between them. 

‘’He was mine,’’ at this the profilers eyes glint sharp as un cut diamond before hardening, a cruel bite to their colour. 

‘’Did you fall with him as swiftly as you did with me?’’ Hannibal utters after a moment of silence, eyes that glisten with everything but fear. 

Will shakes his head, slow and deliberate before his face turns back to the moon, 

‘’I didn't fall with him. I flew.’’ 

Silences envelopes them again as they rest, side by side as they did in Italy and along the hungry jaws of the ocean floor. Eventually Hannibal rises, holding an arm out expectantly until Will turns to stare the gesture down. 

But Hannibal’s expression is as unmoving as his body and Will knows it is pointless to fight when the only way out is through. 

When he stands, he is unsteady, legs that tremble with drug withdrawal and rage yet unfelt. He grips at the arm of the man he had wanted to see dead so badly that the relief he feels at seeing him alive leaves him staggering. 

They sway together for a moment, Will clutching at the doctor for balance as Hannibal steadies him with a warm hand against his hip. 

It could have meant something if the other man hadn't been the reason why he felt so weak and weary, at last found but by the person who had rendered him lost. 

As Hannibal leads him out into the hallway all of Will’s previous suspicions are confirmed. He wants to ignore the picture of a happy wife beside her happy husband within expensive frames upon white washed walls as he is being walked through their home, but he makes himself look, as he always has. 

The woman is beach blonde and freckled, the man with his tanned arm about her shoulders and a chest that is course with black hair. Will counts the countries that he recognizes in the back drop behind their smiling faces. France. Egypt. Croatia. Japan. 

All the other doors that line the hallway are closed to them and Will can only wonder why Hannibal had put him within the marital bed of the missing couple while the doctor takes up the guest room. Unless it was to enhance the raw desolation he felt whenever he looked to his side and found it empty. 

‘’What happened to the man that had been left to decay within the Atlantic, I wonder?’’ Will mumbled to himself as they begin their uneven steps down the stairs. 

Hannibal shifts himself under Will’s arm to take his weight, like the couple in the photos and it surprises the younger man enough to dislodge the nausea when Hannibal answers him. 

‘’I was woken by lungs full enough to burst with sea water before I was tugged free from the fate you had given to me. It appears Chiyo did not agree with your methods of disposal and perhaps found you more predictable than myself. She had already prepared and set sail her own boat by the time the dragon had finished bleeding out.’’ 

The rest was left unsaid although the above information had been conversational, like the relaying of a simple recipe. It seemed avoiding his own life's end had been as basic a step to take as ending the lives of others. 

It was the recovery of Hannibal's wounds that were unspoken and Will could all too easily feel it. The whole large and wide enough within the older man’s sides to expose the bright bone of his ribs, each deep nick of skin and muscle that left him bruised right down to the blood. 

Did the groaning of a tap or the trickle of water make his mouth run dry? 

Once at the bottom of the stairs and around the corner Will finds himself confronted too suddenly with a dining room. The floors are black beach wood, the table a thick veined marble and the drapes that cover each bay window are made from the richest of red silk, like the upholstery of the dining room chairs. 

Hannibal had murdered the couple because he liked the décor of their home and the way their absence would keen on the highest, most painful notes of guilt within Will’s soul. 

For that reason, they had been perfect. 

Hannibal allows Will his moment of wavering stillness as he takes in the setting before he escorts him to the chair. on the right to the head of the table. 

As he falls into the padded upholstery Will feels the tight tug of the scar across his abdomen, the ghost of an ache like the gentle pulling apart of a heat. 

The drugs still in his system cast the glint of fine silverware into a fine hue of gold, haloed by the chandelier overhead. It is like the stomach lining of a dream too far from memory to recall any greater detail. 

‘’Please excuse me while I go fetch our guest,’’ Hannibal implores, hands smoothing down the crease in each charcoal clothed leg before leaving through the swinging door of the kitchen. 

Will swallows away the cotton thickness in his throat, where a scream should be trapped but isn’t. Surprisingly his mind is awash in the same white noise he had awoken to only now it resembles a comfortable numbness. The detachment from a nightmare he is still unsure of surviving the first time around. 

He curls his socked toes as he does his fingers, claws at the lack of sensation as if by brute force he can wake himself up from it. 

He feels nothing right up until the moment his ears pick up the slap of naked feet against tiles, the tinkling of metal like the slack between handcuffs. 

Then Will see’s Matthew, herded through the door with his own expression of gutted emptiness upon his narrow features, and suddenly he is very much alive. 

When the younger man’s eye’s fall to his they crackle with an instant alertness and he strains against Hannibal's hand on his shoulder, attempts to jerk him off as if sickened by the touch. 

‘’Will,’’ Matthew says his name with the kind of reverence that is the complete opposite of Hannibal's own pronunciation. He makes it sound like the first lung full of air he has ever taken. Hannibal makes it sound like the last. 

‘’Please be seated Mr. Brown,’’ the doctor instructs, applying enough gentle force to curve the man towards the chair opposite the table from Will. 

The ex-special agent tries to truly see him through the lingering haze, takes count of his own tattered tank top and jeans. When he is seated and his arms come up to reach across the table Will can make out the indents bitten into the thin skin of his wrists. They look as battered as Will feels. 

There is something that twists the wafer lines of Matthew’s lips and the burning blackness of his eyes into an agony when he looks at Will. It is confusing and this does scare the profiler so he reaches out across the table to meet Matthew half way, arms pushing aside expensive plates to knot their fingers together at the tables centre. 

Hannibal has stepped back to watch them from behind the chair to their side, left empty for him as if a lonely throne. He watches them, expressionless and it feels like being under surveillance by a faceless security camera. Will thinks distantly that it feels familiar. 

‘'I shall leave you to your reunion while I go prepare the first course, please resist any attempts at escape. I had hoped to have a civil meal together.’’ 

To Will the doctors usual flat intone sounded as forced as every smile he had made those first few months after Will had thought him dead. He understood how suffocating the need to pretend had been, at a normality they had never called their own around others they had no intentions of getting close to. Except everyone within that room was now within cutting distance and Will can’t help the image of them scattered around the place like ribbons ripped from a school girls' hair. 

Once they are left alone Matthew is reaching across the table at him, hands fisting at the terrycloth of Wills arms. 

‘’What did he do to you?’’ The question falls trembling from the orderly's lips, cutlery scraping obscenely as his desperate movements send a fork and napkin holder clattering to the floor. 

Will can understand his urgency and yet he cannot match it. 

‘’Nothing he hasn’t already.’’ 

This seems to do little to reassure Matthew who takes a moment to cup his face as if holding the most fragile of glass up to the light. His skin feels like a sigh across the bone of his cheek as Will watches the cold bleach his eyes to a void less night. 

‘’Just hold tight ok, I’m going to get us out of here,’’ and Matthew forces a smile, stretched far too thin across the paleness of his face. 

Will wishes he had the energy to persuade him otherwise, the strength to urge him to play at dead until he can see and grasp his chance to run. But Matthew has always been a fighter and Will has always been rendered speechless by the fear of losing him. 

The kitchen door glides back to reveal Hannibal once more, plates balanced from his hands to his elbows. His refined confidence of himself is back in place, the performance once again steam training them to their final scene as he stops to take notice of how Matthew sits back in his own seat, as if parts of him have been torn, broken and bloody from Will’s grasp. 

‘’I must ask that you return your fork to the table Mr. Brown, I'm afraid the idea of stabbing me with it is far too unoriginal,’ Hannibal turns his smile from one man to the other,’ isn’t that right Will.’’ 

Matthew grinds his jaw as Will rolls his eyes about their sockets, from Hannibal to the orderly but far too boneless still to put much pleading behind his silence. 

Matthew bends to retrieve it anyway, tosses it onto the table in careless furry as Hannibal places the dishes in front of them, pealing the lids away to billow steam up into their faces as he gracefully retreats back to his own seat. 

For the first time since they had all met and fallen, both in love and to their deaths, they now sit together at the same table. 

Hannibal takes up a bottle of wine to his left, fills their glasses as Matthew bludgeons him with his eyes and Will jumps from one man to the other, his own pupils blown wide and sluggish. 

Both men look to the Doctor at the head of the table as he raises his glasses and holds it in the air between them, saluting his captives. 

‘’To the flighting fancy of friends,’’ Hannibal toasts, levelling them each with his coyness. 

Matthew interrupts before the wine can spill across the older man's tongue. 

‘’To your raging Wendigo Psychosis.’’ 

Hannibal smiles around the rolling of alcohol in his mouth, setting it down with a side long look to it as if considering its boldness. 

He looks charmed when focusing back on the orderly as if only now recalling his presence. 

‘’A fascinating study brought about by the cannibalistic tendencies of the northern tribe of Algonkian native Indians,’ Hannibal simpers, folding his napkin over his lap and directing his eyes to Will. 

The profiler lowers his own gaze to his plate, the meat beneath a syrup of red sauce both pink in the middle and brown as casting sugar at its fringes. As always, it smells mouth watering. 

He makes no move to reach for his fork as the doctor continues. 

‘’It is because of this that the recognition of a hunger for human flesh extends far from the primal urges of a Neanderthal species on the outset of society, to include those in their fine Sunday bests with pocket watch and top hat.’’ 

Will knows of the study they use to toss back insult and inquiry to one another but finds he has so very little to say on the matter, far too tired for his own version of softly brimming rage that keeps Matthew talkative. 

‘’Interesting to think the agenda for said tendencies had been narrowed down to only three possible means to one very specific end.’' 

Hannibal spears a sautéed carrot onto his fork and into his mouth and although it seems he is the only one at the table that has been permitted to use a knife he does not. Its nearness is there to test the profiler to his right and provoke the younger man to his left into action, a modest experiment before the second starter. 

‘’Preserving the relationship of a loved one who has been deemed as lost, a way of solving ambivalent feelings towards another or acquiring a property such as strength or courage.’’ 

‘’Wouldn’t need to phone a friend to find out where your motives lie,’’ Matthew utters, poking at the food in front of him as if it is less than edible. 

Hannibal studies him, eyes flickering from his seeking metal prongs to the look of boredom on his face until it is clear he is more amused by Matthew's indifference than offended. 

Although it escapes no one's notice that every few seconds he runs his gaze over Will, the scanning of honeyed iris over his weary form as if summoned by a gravitational pull. 

Matthew abandons his useless prodding at the meat to instead snatch up his glass of Merlot, attention drawn to the head of the table when Hannibal replies, 

‘’Who can say,’’ though he looks at Will as he speaks, like a flower following the molten face of the sun across it’s sky. 

Matthew has strength of his own, a self-restraint that can act as adamant a cage to himself as the un moving bars of every general population prison he had ever been in, but it is at seeing the hunger of longing within the doctors' eyes as they roam over the man across from him that sends his resolve crumbling past control. 

Even Will turns sharply at the noise of glass splintering within Matthew's hand as Wine bleeds from the crack down its middle before breaking apart completely around the force of his grip. 

Hannibal’s smile is as small as his sigh as he takes in the fine shards of crystal that lay twinkling about Matthew’s untouched meal. 

The alcohol is a red too rich for simple grapes and it stains the spread before them as it seeps around fine china and cutlery, withering the bone white of their napkins. 

The abrupt silence thickens the air around them as both men look to Matthew, one who struggles around the breath play of his name and the other who scents the smell of blood only just blooming from the split in his palm. 

He squeezed his fist closed, finger nails digging into the laceration along his life line as he imagines crushing the good doctor like he had the glass of Merlot, drinking from the auburn liquid that pools from each break in his skin until he is drunk off him. 

‘’Seems contagious,’’ Matthew confirms the dark twist of his thoughts to the other two men, winning a head tilt of acknowledgment from Hannibal. Will simply looks stone like in his paleness, the flickering of his lashes that frame each eye the only sign that he struggles to remain present. 

‘’That was a discourteous waste of good food Mr. Brown.’’ 

‘’Don't you mean good people?’’ Matthew counters, tone as dangerously feline as his movements would otherwise be. 

‘’You would know all about that I suppose.’’ 

At the angry furrow of confusion in the orderly's brow Hannibal continues. 

‘’Does it bring to mind the way you throttled the young mother in your state provided accommodations?’’ 

Matthew feels the oxygen lodge in his throat as Will’s breath spills from him like the finest of wine and the thickest of blood. Like a revelation. 

‘’Perhaps dear Will can remind us of her name,’ Hannibal turns to him expectantly, glass hovering forgotten in his hand, ‘he did after all help investigate the events of her death.’’ 

A war of hate and trepidation makes its way through the youngest man at the table, tearing him in two with the need to explain to Will and then to simply silence Hannibal for good. 

‘’I should have burnt you on that cross,’' Matthew settles for the bitten-out hiss of his own regret. 

‘’You...,’ the weak warble of Will’s voice snaps both men's attention back to him,’...you were there weren’t you, watching us?’’ 

The profiler's eyes rise to meet Hannibal’s own and it is all he needs for confirmation when the doctor does not look away. Will nods to himself instead. 

Mathew wonders briefly if Will had even heard the older man's omission or if he had already gone back to regarding him as a ghost, barely there. 

‘’I returned a few months after the fall once I was physically able and was welcomed by that rather charming television special about you. I had not accounted for Matthew's presence but I did still enjoy the photo of you both, it was the first time I had seen you since our rebirth within the Atlantic, Will.’’ 

The profiler looks as if he has been laid bare by the ruin of Hannibal's confession but it is the doctors most well-hidden emotions on the matter that leave him breathless. 

It feels like being twisted inside out, like wearing a suit of exposed nerves that shriek in pain against the gentle draft of every whispered thought between them. 

‘’Who did you think informed Jack as to your whereabouts?’’ Hannibal directs his question at Matthew, the slight jut of his jaw like the regal exposure of a throat that knows no knife can pierce it. 

Before anyone can respond the legs of Will's chair groan against the wood of the floor as he clumsily pushes himself away from the table and endeavours to stand. 

‘’I think I’ve had enough,’’ he says, quiet and so very small as he staggers away as if utterly wounded by them. 

‘’I will be up in a moment,’ Hannibal responds to the retreat of Will’s back,’ as soon as I've cleared the table.’’ 

Then he turns to Matthew with the same innocent gesture he had used to cup his face before knocking him out with the brute force of his knee. 

‘’Would you care to help?’’ 

And suddenly Matthew feels as drained and as conquered as Will. 

Securing Matthew again had been effortless although at he had threatened to resist at first. Hannibal had simply reminded him that Will’s fate rested not only within his hands but Matthew’s own. It had been enough to ensure that he willingly excepted the cruel bite of the metal collar and the chain that padlocked him to the coal burner in the basement. 

Once the table was cleared Hannibal made his way up stairs, stopping in the guest bedroom to collect his sleepwear before letting himself into the master bedroom. 

The air in there smelt of Will. Like orchids and boat varnish. 

The profiler rested on his back within the centre of the bed, positioned as if being fitted for a coffin although his eyes were open and blinking wearily about the gloom. 

The bathroom light was left on in the adjacent room, cutting through the dark and leaving half of Will’s face in shadow. 

Hannibal made his way to the side of the bed closest to the exit where a decanter of cranberry juice sat untouched on the side table. 

‘’I do hope you forgive Mr. Brown his trespasses, he is after all still quite young.’' 

Will turns to regard him as he begins to unbutton his suit, buttons obeying each well practiced flick of his wrist until Hannibal bends to step out of the dress pants as well. 

‘’No, you don’t,’’ Will sighs and it is almost fond. 

His eyes pour over Hannibal as they would an unknown book. He catalogues each pearlescent scar that runs as fine as veins across his back and chest. His muscles, though solid are peppered with the damage of a life lived often beside the reality of death. 

Will can see where weapons ruptured the slight tan expanse of his skin, where the rock on the ocean bed had flayed the flesh from his shoulders. But Hannibal had healed well as he so often did and with each dance of light and shadow across the bareness of his body, he shimmered with the illusion of wounds that seemed stark one minute and then invisible the next. 

The black cotton of the doctor's briefs curved tight to the thickness of his thighs and Will decided not to bother averting his line of sight from the bulge between Hannibal's legs. 

Will’s words made him chuckle once before their eyes are locked once more, the night shirt bunched in Hannibal’s hand like the forgotten offering of a bouquet of flowers. 

It was obvious he intended to sleep here tonight, beside Will and though the reasons should have been just as transparent there seemed to many of them to regard as something simple and clear. Nothing between them ever was. 

‘’I'm thirsty,’’ Will said, almost matter of fact as he ran a tongue along chapped lips and caught his own head before it could loll on the stalk of his neck. 

Hannibal dropped the shirt and proceeded to pour the cranberry juice into the empty glass that had been left for him, reaching out to offer it to Will with a hand that seemed constantly steady. 

When Will opened his eyes again he merely huffed at the sight. 

‘’I have no desire to ever feel this drugged again so do you really think I would willingly take anything you give me?’’ 

Hannibal looks as if to chastise him before thinking better of it and raising the drink to his own lips, gulping twice before offering it again. 

Will still appears unconvinced, face unreadable as he ignores the glass and directs the steel of his eyes straight into the heat of Hannibal's own. 

The doctor merely sighs, drawing another few mouthful from the cup before returning it back to the table and continuing to change. 

‘’What are you doing Hannibal?’’ Will whispers into the night. 

‘’Readying for bed Will, I find myself tiering much sooner since our fight with the dragon,’’ Hannibal replies, pulling back the duvet. 

‘’No,’ the profiler states a touch louder, enough to give the other man pause,’ what are you doing?’’ 

It is ad if his words begin a slow unravelling of the man that looms over him, casting his shadow across his form. 

‘’What am I doing, Will?’’ the doctor turns the question over, directing it back at him calmly as if he had never considered it before. 

‘’Do you mean when I pulled myself from the grave of waves you had tried to bury me beneath to lay lame in hostel beds while my charge tended to me, afraid each breath might be my last?’’ 

Hannibal considers him with a stare that grows within its own intensity. 

‘’Or are you referring to those nights in recovery where I dreamed of you still, unsure if you yourself had survived by the way you haunted every moment of solitude from within my mind?’’ 

A ghost of a frown appears above the barely visible slash of his brow as his words rumble low and reverent. 

‘’Maybe you are speaking of each country I passed through on my way back to you, as untouched as the memory of you by things I once considered beautiful and places I had felt more deeply for than any other thing of flesh, before I had known you.’’ 

Will’s eyes shine bright with the glistening shield of tears across his pupils that pulse unshed like the flare of a star. Hannibal too, looks hurt. 

‘’What was I doing when I returned to you once more, to the very first moment I sore you, reborn, but in the arms of another...And how you smiled for him, how you once had smiled for me.’’ 

His voice tightens until the words sound almost choked. It is as if he had gutted the other man again, Will almost curls back into himself with the force of it. 

But Hannibal stops him with a knee pressed to the mattress by his hip and a hand large enough to crush a small skull by the side of his temple. He leans over him and into him, threatening him with the phantom of his touch. 

‘’What do I do Will, but all I have ever done?’’ His whisper is no less chapped with emotion as the fine strands of his hair feather across Will’s forehead. 

His breath hitches at the heat of him, the scent of damp forest floor that permeates from him even now. 

‘’I search for you.’’ 

Will stays still enough as Hannibal eases into the spaces left between them until their lips find each other with bated breaths, pulled in harsh trembles back through their noses. 

And it is like chasing fire from within the darkest heart of the night. 

Will’s gasp echoes like a sob that Hannibal takes past his teeth to bury inside of his own throat. Dimly the younger man is aware of Hannibal’s hand that glides at ease from the arch of his cheekbone to imbed delicate shaped fingers into the forest of his curls. 

The doctor lets go of a groan of his own. It sounds as if he is starved and soon his mouth is dancing against Will’s like that of a man who understands nothing as well as he does the need to devour. 

Neither pay any mind to the tears that alas have fallen to meet the hungry thirst of their kiss. It leaves the taste of their last encounter together and Will feels as if he is now the cliff upon which they had stood. He can sense his own erosion beneath the urgent clutching of the man on top of him. 

His hands rise like steam between them to find their way beneath Hannibal’s shirt. He meets the battle scars across the ridges of his abdomen with tender brush strokes of his fingers, feels the muscles tick beneath his touch. 

Will wonders if this is how powerful Hannibal felt when he ended a life. 

Their movements are at first suspended and jerky as if unsure until they slide against one another, both sensual within their surety. 

Now neither of them doubts the reality of the other, as if men walking steadier on a ground they trust not to fall out from beneath them. 

Will’s touches feel genuine in their trepidation and Hannibal’s feel reliable in the gentle seeking of fingers that grace each staggering of rib, each exposure of artery from arm joint to throat. 

He pulls from Will every hitched little sigh and the furious gallop of his heart, composing a sonnet from the sound of his life to recite back to him. 

The profiler is so lost amongst the music of their making that he almost doesn’t notice the steady increase of the weight on top of him. A body growing heavier and heavier with the effort to lift itself. 

When Hannibal breaks away from him, their noses just shy of nudging one another to look into his eyes, Will refuses to feel guilt at the sedation he sees there. Instead, he swallows down the taste of him as Hannibal applies effort to clear his vision of its daze, to blink away a haze that gathers thick behind his pupils. 

The doctors tongue runs across the red swell if his own bottom lip but not to savour the flavour of the man beneath him. He looks at Will with both the flagging of his lust and a lingering amusement. 

‘’It was not fear of my poison that had you refusing to drink,’’ Hannibal sucks in breath from Will’s own parted lips, struggling to fill his lungs enough to satisfy the heave of his chest. 

‘’It was fear of your own,’’ he finishes simply, the light of pride in his eyes swelling just once before it is smothered by the ink of his pupils. 

Will’s palm is spread across the skin and bone where bellow beats Hannibal’s heart, growing sluggish beneath the stillness of his touch. The light from the bathroom casts the track of drying tears into a dimmer glisten, like paper thin moth wings, but his eyes are conflicted. They are the ceramic blue of sorrow along the silvery steel of something regret less. 

‘'The woman who slept in the bed we lie in now, who you tried to feed us at dinner this evening, her name was Daphne Defoe,’ Will’s voice breaks over each careful choosing of words, pressed from his chest by the flagging weight of the man on top of him. 

‘’She was an insomniac before her end at your hands Hannibal, it was her poison in that cup, not mine... The stash of her sleeping pills from the slipper in her wardrobe, to be exact.’’ 

Hannibal blinks down at him slowly, understanding casting a vivid shine to his eyes as the arms either side of Will’s head begin to hint at trembling in their effort to hold himself up. The rush of breath that leaves his lips to crash into Will’s own might have been one of true delight, had he the energy left to make it so. 

The older man slips back into Will’s body in increments like the gradual sinking of the boat Matthew had bought for him as it sank, burning, to the bottom of the sea. 

He feels the doctors nose collide with the joining of his jaw, his mouth a slow press into the pulse at his throat and his chin tucked within the hollow of his collarbone, collapsing into him with the same ease of his blade all those years ago in his kitchen back in Baltimore. 

Will knows that the pleasing arch of emotions at the irony of it all are not his own. Regardless he brings his hand up to cup the back of the man's skull, no longer surprised at the softness of the silver strands surrounding his fingers. 

‘’Clever boy,’ Hannibal sighs the words into his skin and the tears fall thicker down Will’s face, roll down his cheeks and into the mouth that slurs against the heart beat in his neck. 

‘’Although entirely predictable...at least this time.’’ 

Will stiffens as his words hit home inside the gruelling churn of his own mind. 

‘’Did you think I would not notice the previous home owner’s condition?’ and now Hannibal sounds smug once more, the drowsy pause between each word betraying the sudden racing of Will’s breath, 

‘I noticed what you yourself did, Will...the dark circles beneath her eyes, the shelf of ocean sound CDs to aid a difficult night sleep...the taste of her...so very similar to the cranberry juice you deceived me into drinking.’’ 

Will’s hands are frozen against the skin of the man’s skull, far away from the heat of his body that bleeds through the clothing between them. 

In that moment he is the bird that had discovered itself alone after flying so high he could no longer find his way back to the ground. With nothing else to do now but nose dive, he finds himself falling once more with Hannibal held to him like the secure wraparound of his own arms. 

‘’I took the liberty of calling Colorado's local sheriff department before coming to bed...To explain the situation in which we find ourselves... Three of the FBI’s most wanted, all under the same roof.’’ 

Will can no longer suppress his own shaking now or the police standoff that shutters across his imagination in a hail of bullets and fallen bodies. Hannibal had visions of a massacre and Will had helped him orchestrate it. 

With no less humour than before though barely conscious now Hannibal directs the profiler's own question from earlier right back at him, the words a warm spill of air bellow his ear, 

‘’What are you to do Will....?’' 

Like the dying of a battery that had gone on too long, hiccupping on the last of its charge, Hannibal falls still beneath him, as heavy as the dead. 

Will lets himself think of escaping on his own, dragging his body through banks of snow and the bare bones of forest's until he finds a cabin, he can wait out the autumn in. 

His days would be full of river fishing and bird watching, his nights empty enough of the things that had once mattered most as if a reflection of the man he had become. 

He waits a second after finding the fantasy lacking before pushing up with both hands against the solid brunt of Hannibal’s shoulders, rolling him off and onto his back beside the unoccupied side of the bed that he knows without feeling or thought. had once been the unrestful place of Mrs. Defoe. 

Hannibal looks harmless in his sleep, slack mouthed and smooth faced. So much like the man Will had once loved that it stills him where he stands between the doctor's body and the door. In his eyes there dies a longing that not even the Atlantic had managed to flood from him. It is all he can give the man now, the only thing he has left before Will is running through the hall of pictures and down the stairs. 

Although most of the slowness of his medicated state had been a ploy to lull Hannibal into a confidence and trust he had planned to betray, Will still struggles beneath the last chemical trails of the tranquillizers in his system. 

His heart is sluggish against the cage of his ribs, his blood a dull tide of waves that crashes against the rocks of his organs as he flings himself through each closed door. From a lounge that sits all golden and black and empty in through the kitchen that Hannibal had left as spotless and stainless as the steel that accessorizes it. 

He crashes shoulder first into the passage way by the front door when he takes a sudden turning too fast and his sock clad feet almost slide out from beneath him against the wooden floor. 

As he recovers though, he watches the ground fall away to steps at the far end of the wall and then he is sprinting again. 

Will thunders down the stairs, kicks out at the door he finds at the bottom of the descent and finds his breath once it gives way to a darkness that instantly reminds him of Matthew. 

Hands scrabbling at the wall on the inside of the door way for a light switch, Will calls out, 

‘’Matt.’’ 

He hears the excited scuffle of movement In front of him and stalks towards it, arms held out to feel his way through the cool air of the basement. 

‘’You never could see that well in the dark,’’ Matthew’s voice sounds fond and satisfied and near. 

It pulls Will to where he needs to be, until his foot hits hard at the bare feet of the younger man on the ground and he swears softly at the pain of it. 

Will lets his legs give and collapses into the orderly's lap, finally able to make out the blacker outline of his hair. 

As Matthew’s hands shoot up to grasp at him Will can hear the clinking of chains and the way they echo louder against a hallower metal. 

‘’He chained me to a coal burner,’’ the younger man explains and Will can recall no sweater sound than the relief that helium swells the tone of Matthews words. 

‘’What happened? Where is he?’’ 

‘’We don’t have time,’’ Will barks, not even enough to hope he doesn’t portray the land slide of devastation from within him as he pulls away from Matthew’s arms. 

The younger man rattles his bonds as he tries to lunge forward to hold onto him but he loses Will to the darkness, as he fears he always would, when the other man goes running back from the way he had come. 

‘’Where are you going?’’ Matthew seethes, yanking in frustration at the tether of metal when Will does not stop to explain. 

Will’s POV 

As I race through a home that is not mine, in search of the keys that will unlock both our freedom from the endless night of separation that waits for us beyond this place I am thinking of only one thing. 

What it meant to call you mine. 

To me it felt like the all-encompassing safety of the return from a war in which all had seemed lost. Although we had found one another within the deepest heart of winter days every moment with you had felt like a place where only summer existed. 

You warmed me Matthew. 

No, you did not take the pain away but you did make it as though it hardly mattered and for that I owe you all of me. 

I up turn the coffee table once I have emptied all its draws, tear apart kitchen cupboards and spill utility bills around me like wedding confetti. 

I send the book shelf splintering into lightning strikes of wood once I have laid its contents bared. 

I destroy this place so that I may save you. 

When I am done with the spare room upstairs, leaving it in much the same state as I did down stairs, I return to the room I had left Hannibal in, drugged and dangerous. 

He is still there, still upon the bed and I swallow down my despair as I search the pockets of the clothing, he had left folded at the foot of the bed. 

I dig through the same draws and hiding places I had searched before stumbling across Daphne Defoe’s Quetiapine, I up end the bathroom and leave the room smelling of the delicate perfume that lay smeared across white tiles and shattered glass bottles. 

It is as I pass the window where I had stared to the moon and thought of you that i catch myself, shadows shifting down below in the courtyard. 

I knew the drill, that the police unit would not send large steal riot vans with flashing lights. They would bleed into the surrounding area like the mist crawling down from a mountain top to try and catch us within the pitch black of our own camouflage. 

And they were here. 

I linger long enough on the chrome glint of a gun grip before I am charging back down the stairs, to the cellar where I had left you. 

I snatch up a pack of matches from the floor on the kitchen, kicking my way through the Defoe's belongings that now cover every inch of panelled ground. 

I stagger back through the darkness where you never stopped calling my name, a thing that had resonated through the house in time with the throb of my own heart. 

Once I fumble with the matches, rushing to bring to life a flame big enough to see you by, I am crawling into your arms again. 

Your face, now cast in a glow of pale amber looks thread bare beneath your exhaustion and I lay kisses onto every space I can find. 

There is the dull shine of silver as the chains move with your hands that you bring to my face like the cupping of holy water. 

‘’What are you doing Will?’’ You ask softly, like I had asked Hannibal. Like Hannibal had asked me. 

Usually, the smallest tongue of fire is enough to ensnare you and leave you hypnotized and oblivious to anything else but you never look away from me, even when the violent bang of a door being broken down echoes throughout the building. 

I swallow down heavily the fear that leaves me breathless to push the words past my lips and onto yours. 

‘’I’m looking at you,’’ i whisper and hearing it said is enough to make me smile, small enough to trace with your thumb. 

‘’What are you doing?’’ I ask, trying to distract you from the heavy foot fall of military boots that grow ever nearer. 

The question drops from your eyes as you turn from the noise of the officers that swarm each room, leaving an understanding in its place that has always looked profound on someone as young as you. 

You breathe in the smell of me, let your breath go in a sigh that betrays how very tired you must be. 

‘’What I've always done,’ the corner of your mouth arches up into a smirk before slipping softly into a smile, ‘I'm looking right back.’’ 

Then, before I can kiss my gratitude into your lips, the darkness around us erupts like the rupture of a sunset.


	18. Chapter 18

Officer Briggs is a large man from an even larger family, all of Spanish descent. He had been itching to return home where his annual reunion of brothers, sisters, cousins and aunts were throwing their usual siesta, when the crackling hiss of his boss's voice trickled through the radio pinned to his chest. 

They had an 11-58. The capture and detainment of more than one federal fugitive. 

From the moment every office in the south side county of Colorado had received the notice it had seemed like being flung into the revolving walls of a tornado. 

The whole department had steeled themselves inside the small holding cells of the down town station, dozens of men and the odd woman in their pressed blue uniforms crammed against desks and into corners. 

The looks on their faces were all the same. A bemused excitement as they listened to their very own Sherriff Holloway call in the arrest to an FBI official, promise to lock the place down while they waited for them. 

Briggs filtered his way through the crowd until he stood nearer the front, close enough to see the heavy steel doors on the three separate cells where said fugitives were being held. 

He felt a shuffle to his side, turned to come face to face with his blue-eyed partner that had cursed him all the way through their training. 

Leaning into her he muttered, ‘’Who are these guys?’’ 

‘’You won’t believe it but I'll tell you any way,’ she grinned toothily, ‘Hannibal the Cannibal, his ex-FBI lover and the Chesapeake Ripper Copy Cat.’’ 

Officer Briggs had let his eyes wander with his attention towards the prideful chest puffing of the sheriff before her words sank in, causing his eyes to snap back to hers. His head tilted in disbelief as his mouth dropped open beneath the fringe of his moustache. 

His partner’s smile stretched wide enough to look painful, big enough to hide the unease beneath as she slowly nodded in reply to the silent question. 

Yes, really. 

‘’They said anything yet?’’ 

‘’One is still asleep, the other seems like the strong, silent type. Unsurprisingly it’s the youngest who won’t shut up.’’ 

When she pauses officer Briggs rolls a hand at her, a motion to urge her into further detail, 

‘'And?’’ 

‘’Last thing he said was, and I quote, ‘’it’s gonna take more than this steel to keep me away from him,’’ his partner sounded both sardonic and intrigued. 

‘’Away from who?’’ 

She shrugged her heavily padded shoulders, eyes drawn to the sheriff now shaking the hand of an officer who had assisted on the raid, 

‘’Beats me, I think he meant either the Cannibal or the Agent. Probably wants to kill one of them... Or both.’’ 

Briggs nods as if convinced that the fight lies between the fugitives, instead of the three men and the rest of the world, though he has been in doubt about much of everything since that night. 

After the press had decided to rename them as, ‘The Three Birds of a Feather.’ 

Matthew POV 

The flare they had tossed into the basement had struck my leg and skidded to a stop not an inch away from our huddled bodies, blinding us to their entry. 

Before I can claw at you tighter you are torn away from me and I am snarling as I lunge to my feet, wrenching against the chains as chaos implodes around me. 

Though I cannot see I hear the breath knocked out of you as you are driven into concrete. I too am rendered to my knees before being kicked to a sprawl on my side, a boot crushing my cheek into the floor as I pant around the pain in my ribs. 

‘’Secure,’’ I hear the boom of a voice, definitely a police officer, not far from where we lay wounded. 

I feel a fire rise from within my chest, the thirst to fight before the butt of a riffle pressed hard enough into my back to send me onto my stomach. 

By the time I get my sight back you are already gone. The sight of a room full of men, not one of them being you leaves me weaker than the hunger and the burn of well-aimed fists against my skin. 

They call me a cop killer, a woman killer as they crush me beneath their heals until I am breathless and bleeding. 

‘’We need the key for the lock to get the asshole out of here and into the wagon,’’ another officer grumbles, instructing the others to go do what you could not and find it. 

I am jarred to my feet by the wrench of the chain attached to my neck and I kneel, blurry eyed with a waterfall of blood down my chin. 

I think about how much I've always hated these guys, their starched uniforms and dry hands. 

I think about the look in your eyes before the world around us was bleached to white, defeated but resolved. A man who had traipsed home in time to watch it burn down around him. 

The flames of my downfall illuminated your face too beautifully for words. 

I wonder if I will be allowed to write to you so that I may spend the rest of my life trying to describe it. 

In the end they grow impatient and one man appears with arms full of a machine, the tempting serrated blade of a disk cutter they level at my face. 

The sheriff with his star shaped badge pinned to his breast points his gun at me, eyes narrowed and mouth grim. 

‘’One move and I shoot,’’ he warns before the other officer slides the goggles over his face and the disk cutter screams to life in my ears. 

It deafens me with its grating noise and as it bites into the chain holding me in place, sparks hissing far enough about me to light up the corners of the room I think about the day I had surprised you in the boat yard. You had been too angry with me to do anything but stomp back into the clearing, kicking up grit and sand as the gulls circled overhead. 

How I loved you then, as much, if not more than every day that led me to this one. 

Silence so often comes with freedom even if i am only released long enough to be shoved from the basement, past the table that now sits clear of human meat slabs and wine, through the fragmented remains of wood that had been the front door and out into a waiting prison truck. 

I am still chained, only now by the Colorado precinct hand cuffs that pin each wrist behind my back. I am so use to the restriction of it I barely struggle into the metal bench in the back of the van before they close the doors on me. 

The night had still been deep and dark around me in the seconds after I am escorted outside, gun persistent at my back. 

I look to the moon one last time and again, I think of you. 

It takes no longer than an hour for a team of Swat and FBI to steam the modest precinct, plucking the greatest catch the local Sheriff's department have ever managed out of their hands and into the more esteemed grasps of the federal agents. 

They take them from their cells one by one. Will is first, his eyes translucent and downward as he passes a room full of people that at one time would have considered him the same as them. 

There is no sound, not even the clearing of a throat as they lead him away, an agent on each arm with four more at his front and back. 

Once inside a transport van he allows himself to shake apart so hard his shackles jangle. He would slip to the floor and allow the vehicle to rock him in its transit back to America but they have secured him to the metal bench he sits on. 

It is hours of sharp motion in a darkness that rivals that of the basement where they had found him before finally, they stop. 

When the door is flung open the sky is blinding in its brightness and it makes the flash burns across his retinas ache with the strength of it. There is sun now, no snow and the familiar grey stretch of official looking buildings before he is tugged from the van and through a car park. 

Will is surprised by the lack of media, though grateful for their slow response. As early as it is it seems their capture has yet to become front page news yet. Small mercies. 

He is led into the familiar underground entrance of the BSHCI and would be shocked at his failure to feel anything at all if he hadn’t of suspected that this is where his story would end. 

Will is shuffled through the same dank and damp stone walls, past several guard stations before he is pushed into an interview room. 

He is thankful that at least it is not the same one he had been detained in last time. 

Without a single focus to his thoughts, he is seated and bolted to the table, moving about the prison officers with the same ease as breathing, though that has appeared slightly harder with the more distance that grows between himself and Matthew. 

Will wonders if he’s still in Canada or if he’s well on his way to another maximum-security ward across state. 

The air inside the hospital still smells of cheap bleach and urine. The coldness leaks into his bones with the same ease as before. 

When the new hospital director enters it is with the escort of three guards and a nurse. He doesn’t recognize the balding man in his tweedy little suit but he does notice the familiar curiosity in the eyes behind his glasses. 

Neither does he introduce himself as Will is instructed to stand, turn around and place his hands against the wall. 

For the first time since his capture, he is frisked more deeply by rougher hands than the cursory pat down from Canadian law enforcement. 

‘’Got anything on you?’’ It is something the older guard says that would have once sounded like a question before it because common place, now far to rehearsed. 

Will manages to shake his head anyway, eyes scrunched shut against the tug of busy hands in the jeans of his pocket. 

‘’What’s this?’’ the profiler turns at the sound of genuine puzzlement now as the prison officer slips his hand from Will’s clothing, holding out the smallest sliver of metal between thumb and finger. 

‘’It’s a key,’’ The other officer answers for him, still sounding just as miffed as they both turn to their prisoner. 

Will’s eyes are entranced on it, as they once had been on too many little dead girls to count before scuttering to each man at his side and then the hospital director who is looking back at him with much the same intrigue. 

And suddenly Will is wailing with a laughter that peals from him as abruptly as a scream, both rusted and high pitched. 

The guards jump back before they can catch themselves, rustling the fabric of their pants as their thumbs run along the comfort of their stun guns. 

They eye the director as if for guidance as Will hunches in on himself, giggles splitting him in two. He clutches at his ribs in discomfort and then his knees for balance until the hacking bleats of his amusement shudder through him like lightening through a rod, until his shoulder shake with his sobbing and his knees buckle beneath the weight of his tears. 

‘’Strip him, sedate him and then put him in his cell,’’ 

But Will does not hear the director or notice as they drag him away. No, he is far too deep within a mind bending itself out of shape with the madness of the image that is Hannibal, sagging against him on Mrs. Defoe’s bed as he whispers enough poetry to distract him, so that he is able to bury the key to Matthew’s chains within the safety of Will’s back pocket. 

They leave him dead eyed upon the thick rubber mattress behind even thicker bars of steel, a hallowed husk amidst an entire congregation of broken men. 

A week passes like the blip of a second and the slow spread of a year. The hospital staff keep Will medicated through most of it before the endless injections into the right thigh beneath his buttock stop as suddenly as they had started. 

Life comes back to him like the gradual saturation of a blood stain before his eyes. None of the other inmates attempt to talk to him through the bars of their cells. It is as if his presence scares them sane again, enough to keep to themselves and allow him to do the same. 

It is on the sixth day that he is escorted to another interview room, through the maze of stone walls up from the ground floor to the second level. 

If it weren’t for the clocks nailed to each wall and the subtle changes of expression between night staff and day staff Will wouldn’t know if it were night or day. 

He sleeps when he physically collapses beneath his own exhaustion. The times when he is awake, he thinks of his life before the world had run straight through the cracks of him, a watery illusion, like the smear of oil across night waters. 

Will remembers the days he had filled with the domestic simplicity of work and home, the orderly whose soft drawl and softer laughter had coloured his life in more than the gore of crimson. It had been like touching the light of a summer day as he had tasted the purity of melted snow and sweat across Matthew’s shoulders. 

He tries to recall every undertone of the sensation as he sits and waits, once again bolted to a metal table. 

When Will looks up once the hospital director has seated himself opposite him, his eyes snag on the raven-haired nurse to his side. For a moment all he sees are eye’s that glint within the bottomless shadows of their own depth, a wicked smile that slashes his well chiselled face. 

Will blinks and the moment is gone, the nurse too round cheeked and robust to be the man he had mistaken him for. It had only been a few days but already his captivity has started to unravel him. 

The director clears his throat, a polite demand for Will’s attention and only when he has it does a smile tug at the downturn of his lips. 

‘’Do you know why I am here with you today Mr. Graham?’’ 

Will had slept away within his own sadness more hours than not but still he is so tired, almost too tired to bare. 

‘’Should I?’’ 

This amuses the other man, eyebrows arching as he fans his hands against the table, peacocking his own freedom before settling back into his chair. 

‘’I am to carry out a phycological evaluation of you, to determine your ability to take visitors...to carry out interviews with law enforcement.’’ 

Will considers faking his craziness to avoid any further outside contact before the doctor asks him about his last night of freedom with Hannibal and Matthew, then he is sure the truth should suffice in securing him his isolation. 

‘’What were you doing there?’’ 

His throat clicks as he swallows down his lie to vomit out his honesty. 

‘’I woke up there.’’ 

Doctor Frazier looks both fascinated and reproachful, eyes narrowed in their search for deception. 

‘’You have quite a history with both the other men that were found within the Defoe residence...’’ 

The image of them seated at the marble table trails past Will’s eyes like a thread of silk pulled by the wind. 

‘’What do they mean to you?’' 

Will considers Mathew in increments, as if he cannot withstand the thought of him all at once. He closes his eyes to better see the hard angles of muscle and bone beneath the perfect paleness of skin no deeper in shade than milk. 

Will forces his mind onto Hannibal when the weight in his chest blooms to something that feels almost crushing against the umbrella of his heart. 

The image of his last conscious moment comes easily enough, eyes struggling to focus as his mind had churned sloppily behind them. The clever hands he had not felt against him, only the knifes edge of Hannibal’s words that run sublime across the seam of Will’s lips. 

He had tasted like a glacier. 

‘’They mean... a lot to me,’’ Will manages, voice brittle from disuse. 

The director bobs his head in a nod, encourages. 

‘’Which one was worth getting caught for?’’ he probes further, impatient. 

‘’Neither of them ever meant freedom,’’ Will whispers, eyes dim and unfocused at something beyond the man's shoulder. 

Therefor Will misses the look of frustration across his face, though he feels it as if it were his own. 

‘’Can you give me specifics?’’ 

Doctor Frazier takes in the slight muse of Will’s curls, tussled bed head though not from tossing and turning, the tight line of his mouth like the set of his shoulders. He wears his defeat like the skin of a dream, uncaring if he is awake or asleep as it settles around him. 

‘’Only if you can give me a few of my own,’’ Will mutters, eye’s sharpening to points of light as they meet the directors own. 

He considers the controlled alertness to his prisoner now, the way he had shrugged of his own despair at the scent of something far more compelling. As if tasting Doctor Frazer’s weakness on the tip of his tongue that peaks at the air slightly before disappearing back into his mouth. 

It is the man's willingness to do most anything to access Will’s secrets that have the profiler narrowing the scope of his focus on the director across the table. 

‘’About what?’’ 

‘’Tell me where they are and I'll give you what you want.’’ 

The deal hangs between them, a soft and secret thing that threatens to evaporate should it be left too long to linger. 

The doctor considers Will and the FBI and every stream of journalist, phycologist, psychoanalyst and publicists that will plead with him for unbidden access. He imagines himself being interviewed by esteemed journalist that consider his prognoses like the engraved prayer upon the holy grail, how all the attention and money might last long enough to afford him and his wife that second honeymoon to Iran. 

Will can see the exact moment the doctor convinces himself to agree and the words that follow he picks apart like a crow upon the first worm of the morning. 

‘’They are here of course.’’ 

The profiler merely blinks, almost sleepily at the other man before his own brows lift in amusement. 

‘'Do you consider yourself clever, keeping all your eggs in one basket?’’ Will asks. 

Doctor Frazer bites at the bottom lip of his smile, ‘’ I consider those in hell quite fortunate seeing as all the devils now seem to dwell here.’’ 

And now the man's sense of pride has a root cause to Will, not just at possessing them and all under the same roof but at what light that casts him in. The director who fancies himself the guardian of the vulnerable beyond his hospital walls. The keeper of peace and fowl evil such as men like the three of them. 

‘’Now you will tell me how it felt when Hannibal Lecter served you Mrs. Defoe's thigh within a sauce of berry fruit.’’ 

Matthew’s POV 

It’s not nearly as strange as it should be, being back in the hospital. Not nearly as strange as not knowing where you are. 

I imagine you behind your own prison bars and find some comfort in knowing that the same scent of sterilization and the drab grey of the walls are around us both. 

We can share in this, if not together any other time than when I fall into deep slumber after working out all day, waking to convince myself I had dreamed of you. 

So, I take to the routine like a duck to water although they keep me housed in the newer extension of the hospital, a place I do not yet know by heart. 

As I dive into press ups, rising and falling I imagine the swell of your chest expanding beneath my hand. They way each of your breaths felt like a flutter within my own breast. 

I write to you on rice paper and crayons though they do not take my notes from me to give to you. They go back to ignoring me as if I had never left. 

Do you remember the last time we had made love, along a Canadian road amongst a backdrop of black pines? I felt as if I would either murder you or marry you but in the end it had been neither. All I had to give to you was myself. 

And I wonder if it was enough for you, if only ever getting to leave your confinement once dead and in your coffin was worth the year we spent living within the confessions of each other's arms. 

I write to you of demure school boy notions such as love carved in skin with black ink and of the wing span of my affection, crashing into the memory of you like Icarus flying too near to the sun. 

It will be months before I am allowed free reign into the exercise room or better yet the chapel but I long to be on my knees before a figure of God as I breathe worship to only your name. 

The director regards Matthew, placid and loose limbed as a jungle cat atop his tree, how even chained to a table the man appeared as lethal as black ice beneath his tires. 

His well-cut chest is the only visible peak of impressive muscle, all the rest hidden beneath folds of stiff jumpsuit. Mathew smirks up at him before the doctor can seat himself, a thing of coy slyness with the promise of teeth. 

‘'How are you Matthew?’’ 

‘’I’m swell,’’ he snickers after a moment, finger absentmindedly tracing a line along the table. 

‘’Yes,’ the doctor agrees, eye’s appraising behind his glasses, ‘you're not one to mope.’’ 

Matthew lets his head sag to the side on his neck, regarding him from slanted eyes that reflect back nothing. 

‘’So, perhaps today we should focus on something a little more substantial than dietary requirements and sleep habits?’’ 

The dark-haired man shrugs, an elegant lopping of shoulder that rustles the chains at his wrists and feet. 

‘’We could start with Will Graham.’’ 

And it sounds like a temptation, a whisper that beckons Matthew nearer to the smouldering darkness within his own heart. As if in sympathy the tattoo beneath his pectoral muscle twitches in response. 

He barely resists the urge to clutch at it as the doctor analyses him with critical eye, barely keeps the strain from his voice when he asks, 

‘’What about him?’’ 

‘’Well, you seem to know the man intimately,’ there is amusement colouring the last of his words, ‘perhaps you could tell me of him?’’ 

Eyes that simmer like a dying fire connect and hold Doctor Frazer’s own, the barely there movement of something serpent like against the still water that is Matthew's face. 

This man fancies himself a fisherman too and it is enough of a reminder of Will to appease the orderly's sudden hunger to take someone apart. 

‘’You’re writing about him,’’ Matthew does not bother phrasing his words as a question. 

‘’So are you,’’ the doctor’s reply is instant. 

The man's smile holds notes of genuine humour now, softening the many edges of his cruel mouth. 

‘’I write to him,’ Matthew clarifies, ‘there’s a difference.’’ 

‘’You’re right,’ the doctor relents, hands held up to demonstrate as such, ‘but I do believe he is the key to amending our previous attempts at therapeutic direction in regards to your treatment.’’ 

When Mathew doesn’t respond he continues. 

‘’Speaking of the key... I heard one was found on Mr. Graham the night of his arrest.’’ 

This snatches at the orderly's attention in a way that he finds hard to hide, expression breaking open with all possible reasons for this before hardening once more. 

Delighted with the reaction the doctor adds, ‘the key to the very chains that secured your return back to this hospital, no less...’’ 

He doesn’t believe the doctor instantly though it irritates at his mind enough to cast his thoughts to a heady rush, like that of the sudden hum of his blood. 

‘’So, I guess what I really would like to know about Will Graham is, how much can one trust him?’’ 

The director is all casual calculation. 

‘’Doctor Lecter was the one who locked me up in that basement,’’ Mathew snaps slowly, fingers curling their way into fists. 

The other man stands, guards on either side of him to escort him back into the hall. 

‘’What if that was because Mr. Graham told him to?’’ he throws over his shoulder before departing. 

They take Matthew back to his cell to mule and suffer over those words. He holds tight to the last memory of Will, coiled in his lap small enough to break between the death grip of Matthew’s hands. He kissed him with the same desperation of a drowning man, of a person who could not bear the weight of his good bye. Or was it more like the desperate press of an apology. The feather breath of regret that follows after the slow burn of a betrayal.... 

Hannibal’s mind soars high on each note of the music that plays in loops within his thoughts. Back behind thick bulletproof glass, though this cage is far less spacious. 

Without a desk there is little more to do other than perch on his cot and recall a time where he had roamed across the world, unhindered by bounties for his freedom. 

He had awoken in the back of a transit van, shackled and escorted from one desolate cell to another. They had blinded his eyes in a thick mask when escorting him through his new dwelling and it had been silent as the grave ever since. 

But if they thought that this was enough to fool him how simple they must truly be. He can tell as much from the accents of over worked prison guards and nurses that he is back in Baltimore, remembers the scent well though he recognizes no other faces. 

Hannibal knows better than to let on that he knows as much until the new hospital director decides to inform him personally. 

‘’I trust you will be comfortable here seeing as this is your second stay with us, of course it goes without saying that it will be your last.’’ 

‘’Yes,’’ Hannibal agrees pleasantly, pulling away from the distant memory of symphonies that accompany the images of his youth like a soundtrack. 

The doctor keeps his face carefully natural, hands clasped behind the slight bowing of his back as he approaches the glass. 

Ever mindful of his manners, Hannibal rises to his feet and meets him just beyond his own reflection. 

‘’Will you talk with me?’’ 

The cannibal appraises him with the tilt of his head, a predatory glitch to the movement. 

‘’Why of course.’’ 

Pleased with this Doctor Frazer continues. 

‘’I had hoped to discuss the night of your arrest, before you are required to do so with the FBI.’’ 

‘’To what ends?’’ Hannibal replies, feigning more curiosity than is felt. 

‘’To better my understanding of the three of you...you are, after all, entwined.’’ 

The amber hue of doctor Lecter's eyes cut through him like light through glass, clarity colouring the darkness there. 

He holds his own hands behind his back, hums in thought though his answer requires very little. 

‘’What concern is it of yours, unless, of course, all of us are to be your patients?’’ 

The other doctor's breath catches in his throat, staggered despite the cannibals renowned skills of perception. To be levelled with them is far more powerful than listening to them being gossiped over. 

‘’If only,’’ he tries for wistful disappointment, falls somewhere between unease and intent. 

‘’Would you like to know what your lies smell like to me Doctor Frazer?’’ Hannibal quips, as sudden as a wolfs nose jerking towards the scent of vermin. 

The directors mouth falls open and closed, at a loss before Hannibal explains further. 

‘’It is like the hot breath of a cadaver hound, breathing in death on an expel of life.’’ 

The man glares from behind his glasses, all strength focused on the suppression of the nervous twitch in his lip. 

‘’I don’t smell like death,’’ he states, slow and serious. 

The corner of Hannibal's lips curl like smoke into the smallest of smiles. 

‘’Not yet.’’ 

Doctor Frazer made a beeline for his office, fingers trembling against the glass decanter of scotch in his hand. He dropped down heavily into the padded leather of his chair, free hand rubbing at the ace in his skull. 

He reminded himself of why this would all be worth it in the end, leaning forward to flip through his notes that he fancied read more like a novel than an evaluation. 

The sight of his wife’s feet buried deep beneath her weight in sands more salt like than golden. A new home erected on the hills of Las Angela's where all the other powerful and wealthy congregated. The Roles Royse had had dreamed of since his first few years in college as an acne riddled man child. 

If the only way to reach his dream was through the sticky nightmares of the three prisoners in his charge then he would roll up his sleeves and delve elbow deep until he pulled back an answer interesting enough to sell to the world. 

The shrill ringing of the old dial phone to his left scattered the doctor's thoughts back into the corners of his mind. 

‘’Yes,’’ he answered around a mouthful of expensive liquor. 

‘’Am I speaking to Doctor Frazer?’’ A women replied. 

‘’This is he.’’ 

‘’hello doctor, I apologies for the late hour. My name is Martha Lloyd-’’ 

‘’The new head of the behavioural science unit,’’ the director supplied. 

‘’Yes, may I speak with you?’’ 

‘’Whatever about?’’ The man sighed sarcastically, massaging the migraine in his temple with renewed vigour. 

‘’Oh, I think you know.’’ 

Miss Lloyd looks to Will like a collection of ill-fitting bones beneath paper thin skin, the navy of her suit serves the same purpose as her sensible heals. Both are as flattering as possible while allowing the middle-aged women enough room to run if she had to. 

She stands across from Will in his cell, refusing to sit on the rusted fold up chair provided. He stays standing at the foot of his cot also, a once gilded mirror now barely able to reflect back an image through the seams of his fractures. 

‘’You know how this looks but I wonder if you know how this sounds?’’ She states. 

‘’I have a well-respected couple murdered and served upon their own dining room table. A cannibal who won’t talk, at least not about this. Another psychopath who keeps trying to barter with me, what he wants for what he knows and then there’s you.’’ 

The head of the BSU runs eyes more critical than curious over him, mouth pursing as Will stares right back. 

‘’You use to be the best, now you’re just another inmate. All three of you were there and yet I have had no clarification from any of you about the exact order of the events that took place that night.’’ 

When Will does not break his silence she continues, 

‘’So, I'll tell you what it looks like. The doctor who should have been dead but isn’t and his little pet profiler, I'm guessing you had a lover's quarrel and that’s why you were using Mr. Brown as a distraction.’’ 

Will snorts, indignant and inelegant, barely resisting the roll of his eyes. 

Miss’s Lloyd’s tone turns to steel. 

‘’There’s no point trying to deny it, there are pictures of the two of you before you went on the run. We interviewed your old neighbour; she thinks you two were quiet the doting couple.’’ 

Will fights to keep the light in his eyes and his thoughts in the present, he doesn’t want to consider all that he had been lucky enough to obtain back when he thought his life had ended along with Hannibal's. 

‘’Now there is a missing boy from the school you had worked at before disappearing, you taught the class he was in....You also taught Brown...’’ 

The profiler clenches his jaw hard enough to cause the click of his molars, it almost echoes within the space of his cell as behind his eyes the drained face of the dead boy dances like the flames of a forgotten fire. Or perhaps it is the breaking of his skull that echoes rather than the collide of Will’s teeth. 

The agent simmers slightly within her own anger and Will senses sorrow like the rising in volume of bird song, a sparrow unanswered and alone. Her exhale of breath sounds barely collected. 

‘’We found the remains of Jack Crawford in the burnt-out boat you and Mr. Brown had used to try and escape the US.’’ 

She is quiet, as if speaking softly to herself with downcast eyes before exploding with rage again. A woman grieving her mentor. 

‘'The vessel was in Matthew’s name for Christ's sake.’’ 

Her narrow chest heaves, hallowed cheeks flushing pink like a thumb pressing into the centre of a bruise. Will meets Miss Lloyd’s eyes, deigning or confirming nothing and they are as back and furious as Jacks own had been. Right after he had tried to tell Will of Hannibal’s survival, before the profiler had hammered his breath from his lungs with well-placed knees, unable to get the oxygen back around the clamping of his hands about the man’s throat. 

‘’I assume you and Doctor Lecter must have made up shortly after Crawford’s death. Tell me, which one of you came up with the idea to betray Matthew Brown in such a way?’’ 

She laughs over her own words, almost indignant, ‘’i mean it really does play out like quiet the melodramatic soup opera, one of you faking your death and then reuniting upstairs in the bed of your victims while your former lover stays chained in the basement.’’ 

Will grants himself permission to look away now, having taken more than his fill of her misguided presumptions. 

‘’Were you going to eat him next, serve him up like a steak on date night between the two of you?’’ 

She swipes at the pale grey of her bangs that curtain the angry mask of her face, all sharp angles and sunken sockets. 

‘’What I really don’t understand is why Lecter ended up drugged and left while you were tending to Mr. Brown before your arrest.’’ 

She draws herself up taller, hands on her hips as she paces before him. 

‘'Did the reunion not measure up?'' 

For the first time since her little tirade Will speaks, calm and quietly. 

‘'All those questions can be answered if you’re able to ascertain one thing.’’ 

Miss Lloyd looks baffled for a moment, lashes slow fanning the steady blinks of her eye lids, hands falling to her sides. 

‘’And what's that?’’ 

‘’Who tipped of our location that night,’’ and Will steps back to sit on his bunk to let her fast little mind spin itself out like a dreidel. 

Because he is feeling generous and no small amount of regret for Jack’s death he adds, 

‘’Who told Agent Crawford where to find me and Matthew to begin with.’’ 

And the calm that falls over Miss Lloyd is carried with her back into the world on the other side of the prison walls. 

Will stares up at the water marked ceiling and thinks of the body of the young mother from all those months ago. How he had slipped into the skin of her killer, aware of how it had felt like the almost comforting return to a childhood home. 

He tries to pinpoint the moment he had known that it was Matthew who had killed her and when exactly he had pushed the thought away to a part of his mind as deep as the unexplored depths of the Pacific. 

Will remembers one day, among many. Finally, the snow had stopped and the emptiness of the sky had felt almost as heavy as Matthew’s body on top of him. 

He had been kissing his apologies into Will’s skin, for the way he had almost left the stranger at the bar more brain damaged than he already seemed. 

Each paint stroke of Matthew’s lips felt desperate in their attempts to gloss over the remains of anger in Will’s chest. The fear that had fit within the orderlies own like a glove, with the covers pulled over their heads to block out all else but the harsh hitching of their breaths. 

I’m sorry that I hurt someone and in doing so I hurt you. 

I'm sorry i couldn’t stop myself, that I never even tried to. 

Will recalls the way Matthew had almost begged him not to consult on the case, not to return to the siren call of the FBI. How before they had fought one another and Matthew had pulled him apart for it with the moon tide of his body, their words had gone off like a gun in trembling hands, each aiming for the other. 

‘Goddamn it Matt, this isn’t about you.’’ 

‘’Isn’t it/’’ 

Will remembers how their conversation had haunted the empty chambers of his mind with their echo, alone in the shower or sleepless by Matthews side in the dead of night. 

He imagines being back on the beach by the home they had shared, bare footed even in the middle of winter with the lap of waves kissing at his toes. 

Will no longer looks out at the joining of grey sky and water in the distance, eyes heavy on the translucent glint of something carried to him on its surface. It rolls like a tear made of glass, falling at his feet. A slender necked bottle, old paper curled inside of it, kept safe and dry by the seal of a cork. 

There is little need to read it, as he already knows the message within it, the frantic chicken scratch scrawl of an S.O.S. Will considers it for a second before picking it up, skin rough against the bottle that flakes a steady layer of sand, then throws his arm back as if he were about to cast a fishing line before flinging the cry for help sealed in cork and crystal, back into the embrace of the tide. 

‘’Aren't you even going to write me back?’ Matthew appears at his side, trousers rolled up to his knees, a charcoal smudge against so much grey. Their eyes meet before turning back to the ocean. 

‘’No,’’ Will replies. 

‘’Why not, I'm stranded?’’ Matthew sound perturbed, even more youthful within the conjuring of Will’s mind. 

‘’Because saving you and keeping you aren’t the same thing,’’ he admits. 

Will’s POV 

You see i was never your born-again messiah Matthew, although you always thought of me as such. I failed you as totally as you failed yourself, neither of us ever really innocent to the other. The way i held your face to my throat as you slept, whispering to you all of my secrets. The way you pretended not to hear a word. Blind and death and dumb to it all, as we made ourselves to each other. 

I could never forgive you your sins so I closed my eyes and denied you them instead. 

As you did for me. 

When the hospital director come to stand before my cell after Miss Lloyd’s visit, I already know how I am going to get exactly what I want. 

‘’Well, that was interesting,’’ the doctor smiles smugly through the bars. 

‘’I see Doctor Chilton's surveillance equipment lives on without him,’’ I reply, rising onto my feet. 

The observation does little more than pull forth from the cheap suited man a pleased chuckle. 

‘’Do I have your attention now?’’ I continue and I know my eyes are serious. You had once described them as ‘stormy.’ 

Just like that the man opposite me is sobering, mouth settling in a serious line as the low lighting blacks out his eyes with shadow behind their lenses. 

He nods once and it feels like a step closer to you. 

‘’My story for the freedom of whatever correspondence I choose, whoever I wish to speak to,’’ I say, only the first part of my deal. 

The doctor sighs a reluctant hum of agreement past his lips, he shuffles from one foot to the other in his sudden eagerness. 

‘’And the price for the soul access to my mind, whenever you like, for the rest of my days...’’ 

‘’Name your price,’’ Doctor Frazer demands. 

‘’I want regular face to face contact with Matthew Brown, I know he’s here,’’ I finish in a tone that warrants no argument. 

I make it as clear as the glasses resting on the bridge of the man's nose that this is a final offer. I sell to him my mind in exchange for your heart and all that comes with it. 

It will be a particular torture, relenting to a doctor in a way that had almost gotten me killed with Hannibal, but I will do it one more time if it means seeing you again. 

‘’Complete control over your treatment plan,’’ the doctor clarifies to which I nod silently. 

He appraises me, trying to assess the threat, to look past my pale covering of skin to see how deep the rot festering beneath. 

‘’Agreed,’’ he tosses the word at my feet before stalking back the way he came, steps light in victory. 

They give Will the usual rice paper and crayon to write with, a guard standing before the bars to watch him press the sheet up against the stone walls of his cell to draw against it. 

Soon 

It is all he has to say and he passes it through the iron encasing him, watches as they carry it away, deeper into the hospital where they keep monsters such as Matthew Brown. 

Matthew has finally been permitted to use the exercise room, shackled at the waste as he is in a way that allows him to stalk in circles around the room. His wrists are chained to his waste and his muscles flex like the ripple of a micro expression beneath his jumpsuit. 

When he is escorted back to his cell just in time for lunch, he knows that the day is going to be different to all the others, could taste it in the air when he awoke that morning and now knows it to be true when he sees the hospital director, standing near the barred door that they usher him through. 

The man always looks amused, as if constantly tickled by the soulless criminals within his care. Today is no exception as they lock Matthew back behind familiar bars and the doctor lingers a moment longer. As if still making up his mind on the matter, his eyes shine bright as they settle on the orderly, finally pulling out the thin folds of paper from his pocket to pass between two fingers. 

Matthew’s gaze never leaves the other mans as he steps forward to take it, something familiar about the note he has never before seen. 

They leave him alone to read over it. Just one word, signed WG. 

It makes the small little stone of his heart swell to a size his ribs struggle to contain, pushing the organ up into his throat until he feels choked. 

He reads it over and over in his mind as he stretches, languid on his cot with Will’s message clutched to his chest. 

Matthew doesn’t know how or when but he knows it means he will be seeing Will again and it is enough to feel the blood throb of freedom beneath arms that he spreads like the unfurling of wings. 

They take Will to one of the many therapy rooms within the hospital, windowless and bolted to furniture by chains as he always seems to be whenever outside of his cell block. 

A guard to his right demands that Will strip and with no more than a narrowed look to the director seated across from him, he stands and begins to peel away his uniform. 

‘’Just to the hips,’’ he is instructed and the coldness of the room matches the eyes of the men inside of it. 

Will is pushed back into his seat with a rattle of chain links, chest now bared as another younger man appears through the door. Will knows he is yet another thin and fragile doctor and that the grey little machine he pulls along on its wheals behind him is a lie detector test. A rather old one compared to the models they had used in training at the FBI. 

He keeps his arms relaxed on either arm rest, almost content when the man begins to press suction cups attached to black wires to his pulse points, securing them with white tape to his skin. 

Their eyes never meet as he busies himself with riddling Will’s torso until he can no longer move without pulling free the cables that run from the joining of his wrist and elbows, his pectorals and ribs where his heart beats steadily beneath. 

He steps back to bring the machine to life, the green glow of the on button that buzzes like a vacancy sign above a cheap motel. 

‘’Are you ready Mr. Graham?’’ The director asks, smile buried behind the paper of questions he holds in front of him. 

‘’Yes,’’ Will says, the machine responding immediately with a low groan of movement as it’s reader scratches out sharp incline of his heart beat, now little more than ink upon a page. 

Will tells him everything, from the moment he had woken up alone in the hospital after his fall from the cliff with Hannibal, how he had grieved on his own before Matthew had appeared and made it so that he no longer had to, what it felt like to love him- nothing he had ever felt before through the echoes of other people's emotions, everything that had led up to the night of their arrest. 

Will watches the lie detector spew out paper jagged in lines of ink as he talks. Imagines that reading between the lines of his honestly looked like the black peaks and valleys on that page but that the whole of his truth would always resemble the delicate curves of the origami heart Matthew had tattooed over his chest. 

It takes him a full day to tell their story and at the end of it the director looks utterly enchanted, fawning over results as a lost man would a map. 

‘’Very good Will, I do so appreciate your honesty,’’ and the thanks is genuine. 

The profiler rubs at his eyes as the wires are removed from his flesh, little slips of tape still stuck to him as he shoulders on the top half of his jumpsuit. 

He feels ancient in his relief, as if he could sleep away the rest of his sentence. 

‘’And you are aware that this may be used in court when you eventually get your trial date,’’ 

The doctor sounds board with the legalities but resigned to at least mention them as he gathers up his data on the profiler, more knowledge of him than perhaps even Hannibal Lecter himself. 

Will jerks his head as confirmation, eye lids heavy beneath the weight of the day. 

Frazer beams at him, ‘’i will let you know when you are able to see Matthew Brown, I'll have an interview room arranged.’’ 

Will holds the promise to him like a compass, one that he trusts to lead him back home. 

When he is sat back on his bunk, rubber mattress and sheets as thin as corpse skin beneath him he shifts in discomfort against the pull of the tape still stuck to his skin. 

He undresses and sets about pealing it away, face a grimace as it tugs at the faint dusting of hair. 

By the time he is free of it Will has a small ball of clotted plastic, sponge like in texture between his thumb and finger. He stares at it for the longest time before pressing it to the metal coil of springs beneath his bed. Why he does this he doesn’t yet know. 

‘’Answer the question Doctor Lecter,’’ Miss Lloyd demands, face stern in the reflection of the glass between them. 

‘’Did you tip of Agent Crawford as to the whereabouts of Mr. Brown and Mr. Graham on February tenth?’’ 

The man stands proud and regal as always in his prison uniform, a tranquillity to his movements that set about him a deliberate purpose, always mindful of his next step. 

‘’I did,’’ he answers and it is a simple enough truth that leaves the new head of the BSU floored. 

‘’Why?’’ She asks, breathless. 

It amuses Hannibal to see her stumble along his own though process, like a child trying to keep up with the long-legged strides of an adult. 

He approaches the glass, hands loose by his sides in a way that looks far too harmless for a man such as himself. 

‘’I was curious what the couple would do,’ he explains, smile curving his lips, ‘and they did not disappoint.’’ 

This brings the woman's anger rushing back to her on a wave of blood hot enough to colour her cheeks. 

‘’And on the night of your arrest?’’ 

There is fear behind this question and the Doctor imagines himself taking to the agent enough to play with her a little more before deciding her ending, if they had met when he was still a free man. 

Hannibal looks about his cell as if staring into the still snap shots of his past, the memory of Will is as alive to him as any other and his smile fades around it’s edges with fondness. The way he had looked so relented beneath him in their last moment together, a paradox to the cliff top, almost small. Almost his. 

‘’I was aware of the possibility of Will choosing to try and drug me, knew with certainty as I served the main entre that this was the course he had decided on.’’ 

‘’How?’’ 

‘’He made no attempt to escape and I was right in assuming that would come later, after he considered me indisposed. Before I returned to check on him after the evening had reached its end, I called the Colorado precinct to notify them of our presence within the area.’’ 

‘’Yes, I had gathered,’ Miss Lloyd said, ‘the call was later traced to the Defoe residence... but that still doesn’t explain why you let yourself be drugged Doctor Lecter. You could have killed both Graham and Brown then made your escape, cut your losses so to speak.’’ 

He considers this plucky older woman who could never understand a man like himself and Will, who barely understands herself as she tries to diligently avoid meeting her own eyes in the glass of his cage. 

‘’If I thought it would be such a simple task to free myself of Will Graham then I likely would have done so,’ Hannibal agrees. 

‘’You make it sound like you were the one he had chained up,’’ she quips, eye brow arching high. 

‘’I was no more a free man then than I am now, we are all each other's prisoners Miss Lloyd.’’ 

The dawning of realization blooms wide inside the eyes of the agent and Hannibal turns his back to her, dulled by the obviousness of it all. 

‘’You couldn’t kill Mr. Graham...and you couldn’t keep him, so you took away his last chance at freedom, after chaining it up to a coal burner,’ the women hopped from awestruck to amused before settling on wistful, ‘tit for tat...’’ 

Hannibal sounded just as entertained though the unseen flicker of his eyes reflected only sorrow, deep and endless and honey thick,

‘’my his for his that.’’


	19. Chapter 19

Mathews POV 

I am part way through my morning exercises, my uniform pulled down to expose the bare expanse of my chest, now thick with sweat like the rest of me when I sense a shadow at my back. 

‘’On your feet inmate,’’ the guard orders, straightjacket bunched in the meat of his hands as the orderly to his side rattles the keys on their silver ring. 

I do as I am told, more so because I am curious than any particular urge to be obedient. 

They wait until my back is pressed to the wall, hands at my side where they can see them before unlocking my cell and crowding into the small space. 

They loom over me, tell me to rise to my knees and turn to face the colourless stone so that they can slip the jacket over my body, not bothering to let me pull up my uniform. 

They tighten the belts about me until my arms are locked down to either side of my waste, forcing me to my feet as the sleeves of the jumpsuit trail shapeless against my thighs. 

‘’Where are we going?’’ I drawl, though I think I know and I hope the excitement never filters through my words. 

‘’Wherever we want you to,’’ one of the men snicker, pushing me out into the corridor lined with other cells. 

Most of them are empty and it seems as if I am the only resident of the new wing as they walk me through the hospital, at last allowing me to gather my baring's. 

I memories the walk from the new section of the prison, past nurses' stations and the large exercise emporium before I am lead through a steel barred gate, buzzed through as someone operating the CCTV cameras overhead grants us entry. 

Then I know exactly where I am and where I'm going. 

It itches beneath the restraints and the urgency in which I am forced to move through at the guard's leisurely pace. 

I want to run, to fly to the visiting room, to throw back the door and see you hunched in on yourself like a flower that has yet to uncurl amidst the snow. 

I want to see you more than I have wanted to tear out the throats of the tedious and flay the annoying of their skin, more than I wanted a double cheese burger with fires or to once again sleep on a bed made of more than just rubber. 

Then we are outside the door and they are opening it, hands still on my shoulder as I serge forwards against them and there you are, looking like a dream. 

The sea glass of your eyes catches on mine, tug me to you where you sit bolted and shackled to a table. I inhale until my lungs burn, catch your scent that is still like the aroma of a forest fire as I force myself towards you with enough strength to pull the other guards along too. 

It causes them to curse their warnings and a grin to split the pained expression of your face down it’s middle. Just like my own, it is a thing of teeth. 

They drive me into the chair opposite you, I feel them chain me to it before stepping back but I cannot look away from you, can barely dare to blink. 

One guard still remains after the others shuffle back out into the hall but I forget him as quickly as he forgets me once returning home. Like everything he fades into the grey of the background and this place looks even uglier against the marvel that is your mahogany curls, long enough to flick against your shoulders and your lips bitten a raw and ripe red that I long to taste. 

We sit in a silence loaded with the things only our eyes ever betray, you laughing in a way that is breathless and peculiar and thunders painfully through my chest. 

‘’Hello Matthew,’’ you say and it buckles me at the waste until I am stretched over the table, still folded within my own arms. I pretend they are yours and I smirk back at you, overjoyed. 

‘’Hey doll face.’’ 

It is only once I have spoken do you release a breath that trembles around its edges and it is as if my face can’t decide what to do, lips rising on a smile to fall into serious lines as my eyes overflow with the sight of you. 

‘’I made a deal with the hospital director,’ you explain, voice brittle with emotion, as much my own as yours, ‘’my honesty for your company.’’ 

‘’You’re out of this world,’’ I gasp, delighted and star struck. 

You shrug like your own cleverness and self-sacrifice were never really worth a thing and I long to tell you how they have always been worth everything to me. 

‘’I’m sorry,’’ I say instead, even though it makes me sound far too young to my own ears. 

You shake your head, mouth twisted and eyes glossed over with fluid. 

‘’No Matthew, let's not waste our time on regret.’’ 

I try to shuffle even closer to you, as if I can burrow straight through the table and the guard growls his warning from somewhere behind me. 

My eyes flicker to your fingers upon the table top that twitch in sympathy. 

‘’How should we waste our time then?’’ I reply, cheeky with a cockiness that had been beaten out of me on the night they had taken you from me. 

You grin again and it feels as if I am full of liquid sunshine, you lick your lips and I hang from your words like the most loyal of dead men. 

‘’You told me about that place once in Romania, how it reminded you of me because it was old and haunted-’’ 

‘’I didn’t say old,’’ I giggle, lightheaded with delight. 

Your eyes sparkle from within your face, glitter and glass-like in mirth and you say, ‘’where else would you go?’’ 

I ache with the growing pains of my love for you as I begin to describe all the places I have read about, all the places I would have taken you had we not ended up here. 

The whole time you look at me as if am the one that is beautiful, as if I am the one that bares the face of something holy and demonic in its splendour. 

Too quickly we are interrupted, thirty minutes flying past us like the bare brush of seconds and they are taking you from me once more, pulling you to your feet as the other guard presses me into my seat. 

I twist beneath the grip to watch you go, slender and toned in the bunch of your orange jumpsuit as you turn back to me, to do the same. 

‘'What are you doing sweet face?’’ My voice rises with panic and pain, eager in my amusement to play just one more game with you. 

You understand instantly, pulling back before they can usher you out of the door as your eyes dance with pleasure. 

‘’Looking at you,’ you answer,’ what are you doing?’’ 

And i choke down my laughter as the guard grunts his disapproval, tearing us further apart. 

‘’I’m looking right back,’’ I call to you as they take you somewhere, I cannot see you, no matter how much I stretch my neck on my shoulders to peer out the doorway. 

‘’Sit back freak,’’ the prison officer shoves the butt of his baton into my chest. He does little more than shake his head in disbelief when I turn the bright beam of my love-struck smile at him. 

‘’He’s with me,’’ I boast, chin gestured to the empty corridor you leave behind you. 

I do not tell you that I know about the key they found on you, on the night of our arrest. I don’t tell you because it doesn’t matter. 

Things of locks and chains hold no power now. 

They haven’t since the night you had given yourself to me, whispering your only demand into the skin of my throat. 

Stay 

Will spends that night within his own head, thoughts far enough away from the dankness of the BSHCI he can no longer smell it around him as he stretches out on his bunk. 

His eyes are closed and behind them dances the image of Matthew, skin tight trunks and nothing more as he pulls him along the bank of a river. 

‘’Where are we going?’’ Will asks, knowing it hardly matters as long as they are together. 

Matthew laughs, light and young, continuing to pull him along the narrow path towards the steady rush of water picking up its pace. 

Will expects the waterfall the other man shows him at the end of the river, tree’s that hang overhead shade them from a summer sun that lights along the surface of liquid like stars in the night. 

He looks down at the hand Matthew places on his chest to find that he too is in nothing more than swimming trunks. The look in the orderly's eyes is one of mischief as he presses his other hand to Will and shoves him into the water. 

He lets himself sink to its bottom before clawing to the surface, swimming with ease against the tug of the current that pulls him towards the sudden drop. 

When he resurfaces, scooping curls that have flattened out of his eyes Matthew is grinning down at him. 

He stands prouder than any tree around them, stronger still and for a moment Will just watches him. The ink across his body is stark against skin as white and well carved as alabaster and Matthew lets his head hang to the side, strong arms flexing under the attention. 

And then his trance is broken as the younger man hurls himself into the water, air beneath his feet before he sinks like a stone beside Will. 

It makes him grin, freedom and happiness ballooning inside of him until it feels as if he might float away. 

Instead of resurfacing Matthew stays bellow the tide and soon Will finds himself encased in the familiar cage of his arms, pulled back beneath the water and dragged into an airless kiss. 

He can’t see amongst the dark underbelly of the river, can only feel a hand smooth over the jut of his jaw to feel the way Will’s mouth moves against him. 

They stay that way until it feels as if their lungs will rupture, Matthew’s fingers tugging at his hair to angle his head back and press past Will’s lips with his tongue. 

When they pull apart and dive back up for air, gasping and languid they are near enough to the edge of the waterfall to scrape their feet along the bottom of the river bed. 

Matthew looks out over the drop, eye’s dark as onyx and heavy with something complicated before he turns back to catch Will staring, a grin splitting his features once more. 

He circles the profiler, bobbing in the water around him like the elegant trailing of a shark before he presses himself to Will’s back. 

‘’So, what do you think of this place?’’ He mutters into Will’s ear, hands dragging up his sides to clasp around the older man's sternum. 

‘’I like it.’’ 

‘’Yeah?'’ Matthew sounds happily surprised,’ I thought the water might freak you out after the whole cliff incident.’’ 

Will chuckles, as warm as the sunlight that filters through pine branches as the other man peppers the spot behind his ear with kisses. 

‘’I hardly think the fall would kill us,’’ his voice sounds thick with arousal as Matthew’s fingers brush past his nipple, falling in an elegant line down the gap between Will’s ribs to rest on his hip. 

‘’The fall wouldn’t kill you...but I might,’’ he breaths against Will’s neck, twisting round him. 

The words fall over his skin like his lover's caress and Will’s throat catches as he swallows, breath turning heavy. 

‘’If you could, you would have done it by now.’’ 

Matthew snickers fondly, nose nudging against Will’s temple in a way that leaves both of their eyes hooded. He bends around his body like a snake around its tree trunk until they are standing face to face, a backdrop of abyss and paradise behind them. 

‘’Maybe I should have tried harder,’’ Matthew concedes, voice low and thick as sap as he leans close enough to taste Will’s words. 

‘'Maybe you should just shut up and kiss me.’’ 

And Matthew, ever the dutiful follower does as he’s told, their lips crashing over the others as if they could seal their fate between them. 

There is a desperation to the two men, as if both are aware that these versions of themselves will seas to exist once Will wakes up. It makes Matthew’s movements graceful and brutal with strength as he picks the other man up to push him back through the water and onto the river bank. In turn it makes Will clumsy, legs only just catching around his lovers' narrow waist as his hands scrape long skin beaded with water. 

He feels the suction stick of mud at his back when Matthew lays him down, never leaves him for a second as he folds the long arch of his body over Will’s own. The grass that ruffles against his skin in the breeze feels like smaller fingers stroking down his side. 

Will sighs into their kiss around the slick press of tongue and let’s his head fall back into the bank, knotted wild flowers crowning his curls in a way that has Matthew sighing in return. 

A look of longing passes between them before the urgency riptides through their movements again. 

Matthew’s hands are everywhere, fingers carding through curls, teeth pinching bellow the sensual drag of lips at his chest, the hard bulge in his swim trunks that stick like a second skin to his thighs as Matthew rocks against Will, a boat gliding along its shore. 

When the younger man manages to pull his own shorts down with the hook of his thumb but struggles with Will’s own, he growls low in his chest, impatient, before tearing them from his body so hard Will is jerked from the ground. 

Another laugh, more air than sound is punched from Will’s throat as he runs his thumbs along the soft wetness of Matthew’s brows, down the tender bridge of his nose. 

It pulls Matthew’s eyes back to his, smouldering and intense and Will’s fingers dance along his lips to feel the breath rush out of them as Matthew pushes into him hard enough to snap Will’s eyes shut. 

A groan pierces through the orderly and he tries to smother it in the skin of the other man, where neck and shoulder meet in a delicate dip of bone. 

Will’s head falls to the side to allow the gentle glide of Matthew’s nose up his throat, listens to the dull snapping of grass that is ripped from its roots beneath them but opens his eyes when he no longer hears the lazy bird song of sparrows around them. 

His mouth parts slightly in surprise, for a moment distracted from the man who buries himself to the hilt inside of him. 

The sky is too dark to be considered day any more, yet the sun had been high in the sky only minutes before. When Will’s eyes slide to the river beneath them, past tree’s now cloying with the thickness of shadows he sees a water no longer marbled in greens and blue. 

Instead, it runs red. 

The grass that Will had reached out and fisted at his side now crunches, dry and dead between his fingers. He lets the strings like straw blow free from his grasp to reach up and push at Matthew’s face instead. 

Matthew leans back enough for Will to grip his chin and guide it to the side of them, towards a place that he had likened to Eden. Now a scene that looks more fitting in hell. 

‘’I thought I was taking you to heaven,’’ Matthew frowns at the river of blood, the midnight of a starless sky above them. 

He does not stop driving into Will, merely slows his hips to take in the sudden change around them. Wills eyes are drawn back to the crimson current bellow the bank they sprawl against, the barely there bloating of bodies that are pulled like debris over the waterfall. 

‘’It’s the river Stix,’’ Will explains, eyes drawn to the rotting face of a corpse trapped within the tangle of reeds at their feet. It almost looks like Alana. 

Matthew turns back to him, finally still and frown more deeply etched above the black moons of his eyes. 

‘’I’m sorry,’ he says, thumbs tracing the dark circles beneath Will’s lashes,’ I didn’t know.’’ 

Will feels his face fall smooth as he kisses the pads of Matthew’s fingers, charmed despite himself at the younger man's own confusion. 

‘’What do you think the fish from a river in hell will taste like?’’ the orderly lets Will brush calloused fingers against the slow spread of his smile, hips starting to pull and push at him again. 

Will’s own grin dies quickly across his lips, cheek pressing against dead grass to regard a shore that glistens black as cherry wine. 

‘’Like people.’’ 

Will’s eyes snap open to look around him, now taking in a different kind of hell, greyer and paint chipped in a way that reminds him of the many classes rooms in schools he has long forgotten the names of. 

He breaths out heavily in frustration at the sticky dampness inside of his hospital regulation underwear, eye lashes fluttering as he blinks away the unfocused edges of his cell. 

He will have to wait until the day shift exchange until he can change his clothing, after his supervised shower where the water never rises above a look warm trickle against his skin. 

He will stand there and imagine Matthew is with him in the grubby tiles of the cubicle just to chase away the chill. 

He will count down the seconds until he no longer has to conjure him from memory. 

Mathews POV 

I stand before the hospital chapel room in chains and a smile that I can never quite suppress since seeing you in the interview room. It is a room that sits between the newer hospital extension where I am kept and the older building where you are. A short cut of sorts and it too has been refurbished. 

There are still bars across the stained glass in the arched windows above the pews but the bibles are new, the leather of the bindings glossy and the paint is fresh across old walls. 

I am escorted to the front of the room before the space where an alter would stand in any other church, instead there hangs a naked cross carved from sandal wood. 

The guard pushes me into the wooden bench and I take up a bible, pretend to read while I take in the details of the scene carved from colours in the windows. 

It is of Gabriel, cherubic faced and boyish curls to his golden head as he crushes the face of Lucifer beneath his foot. They both look pained and as rain beats against the outside of the glass the colours run and distort from the inside, as if the two angels weep for each other. 

Only when the orderly has taken a seat at the bench a few rows behind me, resigned to both watch me while affording me an illusion of privacy, do I truly begin to read the scripture in my hands. 

Though I know these old testament stories by heart, hear the words in my mother's voice even inside my own head. 

This place makes the bullet hole in my shoulder burn beautifully but it is the rest of my that aches for you. 

I still try to dampen my need for you with endless exercise and the coldness of the hospital showers. And when I am too exhausted for either I read any book they will give me. I found one about engines and motors of different machines in the library and I considered it a relapse when I ran my fingers over the printed image of a boat motor to recall the scent of oil on your skin. 

You are a constant temptation that I try to resist right up until the moment i can see you again. 

Because I'm not a masochist and even if I was your absence at my side is still a pain that burns a little to brightly. 

I think this is the real reason they struck the devil down. His pain had the ability to make the other angels feel human, and I could understand their need to bury him to the bottom of the earth just so they could stay above it. 

I had once thrilled at the idea of ending your life. 

Now I need it more than I need my own. 

I read over the song of Solomon with a new understanding of the old king. 

‘Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, for thy love is better than wine. 

I cough loudly to cover up the sound of the page taring beneath my fingers before I tuck it down into the collar of my jumpsuit, the words of the verse curling around the ink of my heart. 

An agent waits for Will once he is back from his shower, suited in dark blues and tieless as he stands beside the bars, watches passively as the orderly releases him of his chains to then leave them staring each other between steel. 

He is young enough, brown hair sheared short enough to remind Will of Matthew’s boastful smile, when the younger man thought he knew something that Will did not. 

The agents grin is much the same though Will isn’t charmed by it, it is more tiring than anything else. 

‘’I listened to your session with Doctor Frazer,’ he begins, reaching out to trace a finger along the metal of an empty cell next to Wills, ‘looked over your test results.’ 

Will lets his eyes slip closed at the man's words, follows the blue hue of a metyrapone that slices deep behind his eye lids until he can see the agent's intent as clear as his own. 

‘’Interesting stuff, even to a guy like me.’’ 

The profiler breaks free from his stance with a small gasp, a smaller tremble to his lips and fingers before replying, 

‘’you mean a messenger.’’ 

The other man pauses long enough to look impressed, finger frozen in its caress along metal before falling to his side. 

‘’Just tell me and leave,’’ Will interrupts before the words can stumble from the others lips, once parted open and now snapped shut. 

His eyes are bluer than Wills own, colder still as they asses him before he squares his shoulders and pockets his hands. They fist once hidden inside the fabric. 

‘’I do have a message for you,’ he concedes, 'from the head of the behavioural science unit, Miss Lloyd.’’ 

There is a glint of glass in his gaze now, smile wicked. 

‘’Aint she a peach.’’ 

And his soft southern drawl is like Will’s own before years of moulding it into something harsher had left his accent non-descript. 

‘’She was the one who looked over your results, her and several other specialists and you wouldn’t believe how smart those folks are,’ the glacier of his eyes run from the tip of Will’s feet to his head,’ or maybe you would.’’ 

Will can feel the slow drip of cold-water tracing from the top of his spine to the base of it, leaking steadily from the dampness of his curls. He tells himself it is just off casts from an unsatisfying shower, no sweat collecting there as well. 

‘'Long story short they decided you were sane,’’ the agent’s words gush together on his exhale and as an afterthought he adds, ‘’Mr. Graham.’’ 

The false plastic response of the man's shock seems more exaggerated than Will’s face where his eyes widen before narrowing and then shuttering completely. 

‘’I know, colour me surprised too but I gotta admit I am sure liking the way the end is shaping up for you Mr. Graham,’ he is almost apologetic before that act is dropped too and his face darkens like a summer storm. 

‘’So, here’s what's going to happen to you. You’ll get transferred to a big boy jail, one that has a fully functional execution chamber, this I'll see to personally by the way, so that when you do eventually go to trial and they sentence you to death all you’ll have to do is walk from one end of a hallway to the other to get there.’’ 

The man sounds amused, positively gleeful as Will stands opposite him, numb and unresponsive. If this bothers him, he doesn’t let it show, smile toffee sweet against his teeth. 

He describes Will’s fate as warmly as one would when recalling the cloying butter of melt in your mouth apple pie. An all-American juvenility. Death served up with a side of cream and is it any wonder that Hannibal had fitted in so well here amongst strange accents and particular tastes. 

‘’Oh, and I do hope you said goodbye to your little lover Mr. Graham cause you aint never seeing that one again, I don’t care how many murderers you promise to catch. You could come up with the cure for cancer in one of your little therapy sessions and I wouldn’t give a lick, do you understand?’’ 

And it is a peculiar, breathless thing to be able to feel the hand that cleaves his heart in two as if it were his own, linen soft against pockets as it curls around the organ in his chest with a squeeze. 

‘’Now don’t you go worrying about Mr. Brown, I'm gonna take good care of him,’ the agent promises, like a caring baby sitter trying to ease the worries of a parent called away from their child. 

‘’Cause he’s fixing for the same treatment you see, though I doubt we’re gonna be wasting any lethal drugs on that boy. You know what they do to cop killers up in general population.’’ 

Will’s imagination flickers from one image to the next. Of himself spread armed on a padded cross and withering against the poison in his veins, burning him from the inside out, to Matthew, cornered by prison officers who cover the ID numbers on their uniforms before kicking the orderly until his body no longer snaps with the movement. 

On the other side of those pictures the agent steps backwards from him, edging towards his exit as he works his jaw free from the ache of grinning so wide. 

‘’You boys have done enough now,’’ and he departs on those words, spoken so softly it is as if he too is sick of the struggle between monsters and the ones they love. 

Will turns to the sink by his bed, hands grasping at taps and then the water that flows from them as if to stay the tremble in his bones. Tries to drown the desperate tears in his eyes with cupped splashes to his face. In the end all it does is burn his eyes to bleariness so that when he slips to the floor he could be anywhere or nowhere. Here one minute then gone the next. 

The agent gives a similar speech to Matthew next and relishes the more emotional response he gets for his troubles. 

‘’You can’t do this,’’ the younger man says to himself, barely a whisper as his eyes, the shade of a raven's wing flitter unfocused. 

‘'I already have,’’ he replies simply, sighs as if in relief and satisfaction both. 

Matthew, who had arched himself against the bars with the thickness of his arms threaded through them now jolts back, curling fingers that itch to destroy around unforgiving steel. 

He meets the agents' eyes with death in his own and shoulder blades that dice like knives beneath his jumpsuit. A caged jungle cat ready to lunge. 

Matthew tries to remain controlled, to wrap his self-restraint around him with the same strength he uses to hold himself steady, to not fall to his knees and never get back up. 

‘’Since when is loving a man like me considered sane?’' He hisses as he imagines Will being told he is to die for that very crime. 

The agent shakes his head, smile still cutting on a face that might be handsome if it were capable of expressing anything other than contempt. 

‘’Since Mr. Graham chose your freedom over the life of Jack Crawford.’’ 

The intensity that smoulders Matthew's gaze dies down a little at his words and it is like watching hell freezing over beneath the agent's feet. 

When the prisoner before him sinks his forehead to the bars, face tilted to the floor as if too wounded to stand straight the other man crouches before him, looks up into his misery where shadows and anguish dance like demons across Matthew’s eyes. 

‘’Are you a God-fearing man Mr. Brown?’' 

The question barely breaks the silence around them but it pulls the man's attention back to the agent all the same, considering despite himself. 

Matthew thinks about telling him that the only thing he had ever feared was the very thing that was happening. 

He thinks about giving him this because he will never be able to give as much to Will. 

He almost speaks of the cold winter panic in his chest at the thought of being put into his grave, knowing that the last words they had spoken to each other would never be enough. 

What are you doing? 

I’m looking at you. What are you doing? 

‘’I’m dying,’’ Matthew answers, barely enough breath to form the answer to Will question that echoes too loudly in the chamber of his thoughts. 

‘’What’s that?’’ The agent leans closer, hand cupped behind his ear, encouraging Matthew’s voice to rise a little louder. 

‘’There is no God,’’ Matthew replies, emotionless as he stares at the leather of the agents shoes that glisten like the tears within his own eyes. 

The other man catches a hint of the fluid flickering across the void of his pupils and like an animal too parched to resist, he leans a little closer still to catch the exact moment that the drop falls free between his feet. 

A moth fluttering closer to the flame that sets its wings to singeing. 

Matthew can smell the smoke on his skin, as near as he is and he can see the birth of a fire so hungry it swallows them all whole. 

It drags a smile across his face, confusing the agent enough to hold him suspended in a moment that lasts too long on his knees beneath the prisoner, before Matthew thrusts his arm back through the bars to snatch at the collar of the agent's suit. 

His surprise is tangible. The orderly draws the tip of his tongue past the cruel tilt of his smirk just to taste it, likening it to spear mint and menthols and then he is wrenching the agent back into the cage that stands between them. Over and over and over. 

The sound of his face breaking against bars, like the keening vibration of a bell makes Matthew almost happy enough to break into hymn and eventually he does when the man's cartilage snaps like a twig in his nose and his teeth hang like broken glass from his lips. 

He sings because although the guard had left them to speak, they are still being recorded and Matthew knows how prolonged silence never fails to draw their eyes in suspicion to the monitor in the nurse's station. 

He sings because he finds it poetic, to rain down a vengeance that is both biblical and merciless as the notes of holy praise blend sublime with the agents grating death rattle, past blood and breath. 

He sings because just as suddenly as he was lost, he now considers himself found. Knows exactly what to do and how to do it. 

If there is a God then he favours the lions more than the lambs. 

An unfortunate realization that comes far too late for the agent whose head gives like the burst of a grape beneath the reach of Mathews hands. 

He only takes a moment to relish the sweetness of smiting an enemy as if he were the lightning bolt that was tossed, fierce and fast from the hands of Zeus himself before Matthew is pulling past the pulp of the agents face to rummage around inside the pockets of his suit. 

He finds the pack of cigarettes at his hip and the lighter alongside the carton, the wallet with his FBI ID and unsmiling drivers' license, fifty dollars in cash with the silver body of a clip to keep it folded together, car keys. 

Matthew keeps the clip in his hand, tugging the jacket free from the dead man to thread back into his cell and shrug himself into, putting the items back where he found them after a little pat over each bulge in the material, checking and memorizing like most people before they venture from their home and out into the world. 

A memory of Will gives him pause, after the snow had fallen and the ground had thawed enough for the boat yard to open. 

‘’Don’t forget your lunch.’’ 

And Matthew turns to behind him, as he had back then to grin at Will still heavy lidded and wild haired with sleep, to take the brown bag from him and kiss him breathless. 

His eyes fall to the food tray with its stale cheese sandwich and defrosted apple, grinning at the parallel but taking the fruit any way and relishing the way the crunch of his teeth in its skin echoes like the brittle break of bones. 

He is half way through it, mouth flush with its juices as he sits on his bunk by the time the panicked patter of shoes draws nearer from down the hall. 

The agent's blood has already seeped far enough to lap at Matthew’s feet in his cell, blossomed around them like the wine that had stained the table cloth on his last night of freedom, back at the Defoe's. 

The two orderlies find him grinning around the flesh of the apple, blood speckled skin pulled pale across the bones of his face. 

One of them stands still within his shell shock, eye’s locked on the body laying lifeless across concrete as the other nurse curses beneath his breath, groping desperately for the keys to Matthew’s cell on a loop around his belt. 

‘’He’s dead,’’ 

‘’No shit Johnson,’’ the other replies, voice harsh and high in fear as he sets his eyes like stone on Matthew. 

‘’Get the fuck up and turn towards the wall, so much as a sound and I’ll tranq you.’’ 

Matthew does as he’s told, tossing the apple to the puddle of blood that clicks like a tongue beneath his feet as he pads to the wall. 

He listens with closed eyes to the cell door swing open, to the stuttered breaths that push past both men's lips as they fumble with the restraints to lock around Matthew's wrists. 

He had never understood the desperation inspired by the fear in the people around him. How it rendered them almost incapable of thinking clear enough to walk straight. 

But now he gets it as he swings on the orderly at his back and drives the silver money clip home, into the deep maroon of his eye that gives like jelly beneath the metal, buckles like the scream that tares free from his throat and the knees that sink into the cooling spool of crimson across the floor. 

The man doesn’t stop screaming, curled in on himself before kicking wildly as if he could buck away from the pain. 

The nurse left standing in the doorway of his cell lets the handcuffs clatter to the ground, coiled snake like and forgotten as Matthew approaches him. 

They find themselves in a dance. One step forward. One step back. 

He absorbs the intent in Matthew’s eyes, the endless scenarios he sees there that leave him as just another body on the floor before deciding better of it and sprinting back from the way he came. 

Yes, Matthew understands because even though in his fear he can still bring death to many with the same agile grace as a dancer flayed among ribbons, he still staggers out into the freedom of the hall, a trail of bloody footprints in his wake. 

He still stumbles on the sureness of his feet despite knowing exactly where his next step will take him. 

Almost forgets to grin up at the camera after pulling out each piss proof mattress from the empty cells around him, left like bodies piled high in his wake, before taking the agents lighter to each one and setting the ground ablaze. 

As Matthew makes his way into the next empty unit to do the same, he slows into a stroll, whistling and rolling the loop of keys he had taken from the orderly's belt around the tip of his finger as if he was still just another keeper of the madhouse. 

It takes him back to the good old days. 

It takes him back to Will.


	20. Chapter 20

It takes Will a little longer than it should to decipher the screaming in his ears as not his own. 

The wail of the fire alarm finds him still huddled in the space between the sink and his bunk. It rips through the hospital walls like an air raid before the thunder strike of a bomb. 

And he knows with the same clarity as he had when waking up half drowned along the shore line after his nose dive from the cliff, that this is war. 

Like a siren call to the crazy it pulls at the other men in their cells as one by one the hands of killers appear through the shadows to wrap themselves around the bars of their cells. 

Will no longer resists the urge to do the same, drip drying and breath bated as he leans against the cage before him. 

A prison guard runs past, panting to keep up with his panic and rattling under the weight of cuffs and keys like a street performer in a suit of instruments. 

The air is electric with so much fear and hope that Will struggles to pull apart his own emotions from those of the men around him. 

From above them they can hear the storm of feet like a small stampede, the distant clang of metal doors swinging wild on their hinges to crash into the stone behind them. 

A place that had seconds ago been as still as the grave now thrums like the pulse of an army marching to their deaths. 

The rapid little patter of an orderly grows nearer, shouting numbers to himself as he passes each cell, sent to head count the inmates. 

A break out then, Will decides and he wonders if it is Matthew or Hannibal that rages through the prison like a plague. 

Either way he sees his chance and does not need to make himself gasp past the pain in his chest as he reaches out to the man in his nurses' uniform, as if for help. 

‘'My heart hurts,’’ he stutters in explanation when the nurse regards him with flustered confusion. 

The sirens continue their screech, almost too loud to hear Will’s words but the way he clutches at his breast lights the orderly's eyes with understanding. 

And then he is torn, undecided for a second as his eyes dart around him for back up before Will effects a chocked whimper and drops to one knee. 

The profiler has always been talented at making himself appear weaker. 

It is enough to have the nurse scrambling for the right key to his cell before telling Will to back up against the wall, watching the other man as he drags himself across the cell as if too weak to stand. 

He pants around an ache that has nothing to do with a heart attack and watches from beneath a fringe of wet curls as the orderly unlocks the door and slips inside. 

Will considers trying on the skin of a killer for inspiration but knows it is not needed to incapacitate the man, never needed when his life hangs like a rope from a tree in the wind. 

He feels himself go boneless, ready for the lunge necessary to reach the nurses throat, to rend when suddenly, finally an explosion ruptures the ground on which they stand. It is as deafening as the feral jaws of the Atlantic closing fast over Will’s head, crushing him to the wall at his back. 

The orderly barely catches himself as he too is thrown into the wall, as if they are both rolling around within the belly of the same boat. Shipwrecked. 

They are quick to recover though neither men know what could have caused the impact that still growls through the concrete of the walls, dust trembling free from the ceiling like sand through an hour glass. 

The nurse is already staggering back out the cell as Will’s fingers find the ball of plastic glued to the springs of his bed, where once they had been used to stick wires to his chest, to measure the exact pitch of his honesty. 

He scrambles to the door of his cell as it is shut on him once more, trembling fingers curling around it as he looks up to the orderly from down on his knees, silently imploring as he deftly jams the padding of plastic into the mouth of the key whole. 

Perhaps the nurse did not notice because of the other inmates, now howling and screaming in both rage and excitement as they throw themselves against the cages around him. 

Maybe he simply wasn’t used to devastation in the form of fire and rubble. 

Will is grateful all the same when the man thrusts his key into the lock with practiced ease before twisting it and breaking of in a print from back the way he had come. 

So very grateful that the off click of the lock failing to slide home against the wad of sticky tape is muffled by the sound of bedlam. 

When he staggers to his feet not even the instant black out as the electricity dies around them can distract Will from the cell door beneath his hands, how it gives way like the cog of a clock as he pushes it open to step out into the darkness. 

Hannibal merely glances up at the screeching of the alarms, smile small and curious as he lifts himself to sitting on his cot. 

The prison guards at his post just beyond the glass pales slightly at the sound of it, thumb rising to press against the receiver on his walkie talky, strapped to his front like a badge. 

‘’What’s going on out there?’’ He hisses into the gadget, receiving nothing but the sound of static as his reply. 

Even through the plexiglass Hannibal can smell the smouldering sweetness of the man's fear, rising like a mist into the air around them. 

Finally, a voice breaks even through the speaker, alarmed and angry. 

‘’The buildings on fire, we gotta evacuate. We’re sending more men to help you with Lecter.’’ 

And the words set the doctor to wondering. 

Is it Mr. Brown or Will that had decided to take from them the privacy of their own hell and turn it on the rest of the world once more? 

But he supposes it needn’t matter, that the ending would always be the same. 

The guard curses under his breath before withdrawing the gun on his holster and approaching the other man in his cage. 

The doctor stands before him, hands clasped behind his back and head tilted to the side in reptilian curiosity. Even in his prison jumpsuit he is regal, poised. The same stillness beneath his skin like the coil of a snake that waits for his time to strike in complete calm. 

‘’You hear that Lecter? The place is on fire so we need to move you, try to hurt me and I will shoot you in the face and leave you to burn. We clear?’’ 

‘'Crystal,’’ Hannibal replies, the barest hint of amusement at the word before the large doors behind them swing open and a rush of orderlies' filter through it. 

Hannibal takes note that only the one guard is armed with a gun, the rest level him with tranquilizer darts as one steps forward to demand he steps back and away before typing in the key code to the cell door. 

This should be easy enough, Hannibal thinks as he turns from them to push his back into the wall, sliding down it until his spine hits the ground. 

Above them the alarm still screams. 

Then, just as the door slides open and the men cautiously creep forward they are thrown onto their knees by a sound that rocks the hospital around them. 

Perhaps a gas pipe, Hannibal considers, unfazed but entertained by the strangled cry of shock from each guard before him. 

They all search the face of the other, confused and so very desperate not to be before they are pitched into a darkness that is total. 

Far too easy, in the end, Hannibal thinks as the other men gasp in equal part horror and shock. 

The doctor eases himself back onto his feet and with his nose and keen hearing to guide him he sets about dismantling the men around him as if they were no more than boys. 

He too makes his way from his cell covered in enough blood to track it up into the next level of the hospital, as total in his freedom as he is in his blindness. 

Matthew had reached the nurses station without further incident, staring up into the face of the camera with a knowing smirk to the staff that looked back. But none were foolish enough to go rushing to restrain him and he remained locked on the other side of the bars, still on the other side of the hospital to where Will was housed. 

The air was already curling thicker with smoke, the alarms a deafening pitch around him and he wondered if Will knew he was coming for him, one way or another. 

His eyes caught on the door in the alcove next to him, painted an industrial grey but made out of wood with no more than a key activated lock to keep the boiler protected inside. 

With one last look to the nurse's station, he curled himself away from it into the smoke around him, back down the corridor of cells where men either lay huddled in balls or reached out for him with desperate hands that almost brushed his bloody shoulders. 

He was calm once more, agile and lethal in the way he prowled through the chaos he had caused with hips that rolled and feet that stalked soundlessly. 

Mathew stopped when the fevered pitch of a man's voice called to him through the fire siren, turning to stand toe to toe with him as the bars of his cell stretched between them. 

He was greying and wild eyed, a life time spent within the walls of the institute and Matthew recognized him in that moment. 

They had once called him ‘the mad reverend’ when he had still been an orderly, the old timer who had drank his lovers' blood like communion wine before the eyes of every member of his congregation. He had managed to get at least five of those members to drink the blood too before the panic had spread within every scream of the people who had realized that the taste on their lips was not from the source of a fine blended red. 

‘’Nurse, nurse,’’ the man cried, withered fingers reaching to him. It appeared he recognized Matthew too. 

‘’What’s wrong Mr. Peters?’’ 

‘’If we’re to die I need a priest.’’ 

He trembled more now and Matthew didn’t know if it was the shock of it all or the Parkinson's that had ravaged his body before it’s time. 

He could see past him to the mattress, not made from a thick rubber but a finer cotton with extra blankets huddled on top for a man that did not have the strength to hang himself with them. 

It was the only reason for this kindness. 

‘’You are a priest,’’ Matthew snorted loud enough for the old man to hear above the nose. 

He looked confused for a moment, bewilderment flashing behind shadowed eyes like lightning before he shook his head and begged the orderly again. As Matthew knew he would. 

‘’I will get you your forgiveness if you give me your bed,’ He yelled back,’ and the blankets on top of it.’’ 

The demented reverend paused a moment more, the command sinking into the slow drone of his drug addled brain before he smiled a toothless grin and set about dragging his bed from its springs. 

He made slow progress as Matthew slouched against the bars and watched. The old man would tug at the bedding with knotted fingers, stumbling against it before righting himself and dragging it further to the bars. 

Perhaps after this day they’ll give inmates thicker mattresses, Matthew considers in amusement when the bed is pressed between the bars and he is able to drag it through into the hall. It makes a low hiss beneath the noise of a prison being brought to its knees, a sound that Matthew feels in his own chest even if he can not quite hear it. 

He takes the blankets from the man, bunches them in his large fist before turning to be on his way, then thinking better of it he spins back to the inmate. 

‘’Got any hair jell?’’ He calls to him and the man is already baring his gums in a grin before rummaging at the sink behind him, thrusting the little pot of it through his cage as well. 

Matthew nods his gratitude and makes his way back to the nurse's station with his haul, mattress pulled along with him in one hand as the blankets lay slung over his shoulder and the Gel he fists at his side. The reverends near hysterical cries for the priest that Matthew had promised him have faded into the smoke by the time Matthew has reached the end of the hall. 

He stands where he had before, bellow the camera and opposite the boiler room. 

‘’One last chance to open up,’ he squints one eyed up at the camera lenses looking back at him, watches the way it twitches to track the shape of the mattress that he kicks at with a bare and bloodied foot. 

When the gate does not buzz open, he shrugs and leaves the old man’s bedding huddled on the floor, taking deliberate steps behind him until his back hits the wall. Still the camera follows his movements and then with all the speed and strength that Matthew can summon within a barely lit space no bigger than an elevator, he runs at the boiler room door and throws himself at it, shoulder first. 

He clatters through it like a man breaking through the surface of deep waters, wood splinters around him as he catches himself with a stained and steady hand against the metal dome of the boiler. 

It is darker still in the tiny room and he fumbles around for a light before going back to drag the mattress to the foot of the tank that hums with the effort to heat the water and radiators of the prison. 

It is like following a simple recipe from there. 

Matthew slicks the hair jell over the boilers metallic skin, tearing some padding from the mattress to press against it too before he reaches back into his jumpsuit, pulling from where it was pressed against his chest with sweat, the bible verse he had stolen from the hospital chapel. This too he wets with the grease of the hair jell as well as the blankets that he balls together to stuff on top of the boiler, similar to the mattress bellow it. 

When he takes out the agents lighter and sets the page hissing with a fiery flame to life, Matthew watches as it flutters like the butterflies he had burnt as a kid. The way it soars like an angel torn free of its wings and alight with the rushing of atmosphere around it before it sinks into the old man's bed and bursts into star light. 

He leaves the room ablaze, whistling as care free as he had been before and seeks shelter in the empty shower cubicle, ready to duck beneath the spray of shower nozzles if the explosion proved too powerful. 

As it turned out the blast was just the right amount of ferocious to shake the prison on its foundations, misplacing tiles and ceiling dust from the rapid growth of cracks and plummeting the prison into darkness. 

Matthew listened to the screams and the whoops of joy from mad men and terrified staff alike, ears still ringing from the ignited boiler as he crawled his way free from the indent in the wall where he had been flung. Ceramic slates fall free and shatter like ice slips around his naked feet. 

His nose bled freely, warm and familiar like a press of his lovers' thumb from his lips to his chin. In the endless night of the halls around him he staggers, back to where a hole had been blown so wide through the nurse's station that only the smell of melted steel remains. Matthew can make out little else as he limps forward, arm curled around ribs that despites its protests will not stop him. 

The fire eats away at the entire corridor now, spreading from one wall up over the ceiling to crawl along the other until it feels like walking through a tunnel of flame. The heat eats at him in a way that the bodies of dead hospital staff never have but beneath the discomfort is a rush, heady and thick as the smoke in his throat. 

The fires he had started now rage with a fury that rivals Matthew’s own and despite the backup sprinkles finally raining down water from every dark ceiling they cannot drown out the damage. In truth it barely even slows him down. 

Matthew keeps lumbering forward through the dark, grateful when the wail of the alarms dies down and the howl of the damned men left to burn away in their cells rises like a chorus of the sweetest quire at his back. It is this sound that carries him through the heavy steel doors of the chapel. 

Will feels as if he has staggered through barred hallways unseeing all his life and wonders at the direction his feet point him towards. Always forwards but what they carry him to apart from thicker smoke and a ground that’s heat burns hotter beneath his feet, he unsure. 

He does not know where Matthew is though he calls to him and is answered by everyone but, as he makes his way past cells and down deserted stairwells. 

Once he has made his way up to the second level, he stops by an elevator shaft with its metal doors hanging from its hinges, open like a mouth as deep in darkness as the rest of the hospital. He stares into it and wonders which direction he should be heading, whether to rise like the smoke or burrow lower into the bowels of the building where they had once housed Hannibal. Perhaps this is where they keep Matthew too, in his own plexiglass cell hidden beneath the beds of all the other inmates like mythical monsters beneath their bridges. 

Will’s eyes refocus as the far away echo of metal screeching against stone starts to grow in pitch from the shaft. 

Before he can do little more than sway on his feet the sounds are thundering around him as a ball of flames, the elevator itself ingulfed, drops like a comet down it’s shoot. It is like the angriest match strike against the darkness as it passes Will briefly before carrying on its steady drop to shatter on the ground at the final level beneath him. Will feels it break apart against concrete, spitting fire at the men trapped on the floor below as it rumbles like something volcanic beneath his feet. 

He is to keep traveling upstairs then. 

And so, Will does, rushing with his back to the walls as he mounts the stairs and trips through more corridors. 

Finally, he reaches a set of heavy steel doors and slumps against them just long enough to catch his breath before shouldering them open, surprised that they give, unlocked. 

He falls into the chapel breathless and covered in a light sheet of dust as his feet fall quiet against the stone floor. It is almost silent inside as if nothing existed beyond its walls and glossy wooden pews that never find themselves full in mass. 

It is still too lightless to make out much else apart from the far away glow of moonlight filtering through stained glass and steel bars. 

Will wonders if Mathew knows about this place and then corrects himself with a breathless laugh. Of course, he does, and so he feels his way along the backs of wooden benches until he makes it to the front and falls heavy into a seat, dislodging a bible with his hip that whispers in a flurry of pages to the floor. Everything echoes inside of it but the destruction beyond the chapel’s wall remains silenced and it is like the calm before the storm. The interval before the finale. 

He does not have to wait long before the heavy doors on the other end of the room groan softly into the silence as they are opened. When Will looks to the sound that bleeds into the room, the wails of grown men that scream their agony to mothers who cannot hear them, the figure in the doorway is a shadow rising tall amongst the smoke and the backlight of a crimson glow. It is as if blood stains the flames a carnal depth around Matthew’s figure as he falls into the chapel like a demon half beaten from the bowls of hell it had escaped. 

Will can do no more than stare at him in the brief moment of fire light before the doors close, bloodied and beautiful and boyish beneath his uniform now shredded by cut and bruise. 

And then they are being swallowed by shadow once more as the doors slip closed behind him and Will half jumps, half stumbles to his feet in time to catch Matthew’s eyes before they can make out nothing at all. 

Like a predator alerted to movement, Matthew turns sharply to him and Will watches the blood lust fall away with a smile warmer than the fires he had started, when the younger man recognizes the profiler across the chapel. 

‘’Matt,’’ he means to shout it but it comes out as no more than a whisper before the blackness settles like a blanket over the room. 

But Will can hear the scuffled movements of the younger man as he drags himself through the rows of pews, more adept at seeing through the dark as he avoids collision with ease. 

Will pulls himself forwards, hands groping desperately over smooth wood and curses when his knee strikes hard against the back of a seat. 

When the younger man picks up speed within the void around them his movements turn silent and it thrills the profiler who pauses to imagine what it might be like to find himself stalked through the night by a creature such as Matthew. 

His breath is stolen from him when he feels arms thick like rope, with muscle, reach through the shadows to wind around his back and shoulders, pulling him into the solid stretch of Matthew’s chest. 

Will feels the stick of blood drenched hands against his cheek and the back of his neck as he is clung to as much as he too clings. Only then does he hear the other man, ragged breaths pulled past hidden lips that crash into his own before he can get his bearings, finding his own with ease. 

Matthew lets free a soft little nose from somewhere in his throat that beads with sweat and it is enough to guide Will’s own hands to where the sound dies to an ember in his breast. 

‘’We meet again Mr. Graham,’’ he drawls, giddy and teasing into the soft shell of Will’s ear as he rests either hand on his shoulders. 

And Will laughs, small and relieved as the pain he had worried he would never find his reprieve from vanishes like clouded breath between them. 

‘’Were the fires necessary Matthew?’’ He says instead, amused and rough voiced from breathing in the faint trace of smoke. 

‘’Was the death penalty?’’ Matthew counters, the backs of fingers finding their away along Will’s jaw. 

When the older man makes no move to argue, only tightens him grip now scrunched in the orderly's filthy uniform, Matthew tugs lightly at his elbows until they stagger together. 

Will is pulled through the darkness against the smell of soot fumed cotton and blood, unsure of what Matthew intends to guide them towards but willing to follow all the same. 

They stop and Will can feel the younger man rummage against his own body before he hears a soft click and the plume of a flame dance between them. 

Their eyes connect in the illumination of the lighter, as intense as the element itself before Matthew pulls away to touch the flame to the wicks of each candle sat in their little jars upon the shelf. 

Able to see him now, Will watches him light his way across the room and imagines Matthew thinking of each person he had killed to find his way back to him, how it most likely far exceeds the number of candles left to worship over. 

Matthew makes his way back to Will and with a strong hand that finds home against the curse of his neck, he pulls the older man back into him and catches his mouth in a kiss. 

It is bruising as a farewell and a long awaited welcome, as happy as any first and as sorrowful as any last and it melts Will the way Matthew’s fires had buckled the steel bars that kept them apart. 

Will finds himself swallowing down the fear he had not let himself feel since their capture and bites back into the mouth against him until the man who leans down into him relents to steal back air into his lungs. 

They feel smoke singed and Matthew chokes around the tightness in his chest, wincing at how the movement jars the battered bones of his ribs. 

Will surveys the damage he has taken so readily to get them here, nose bleed smearing his lips and gums with blood, the pale cream of his skin littered in smudges that could be dirt or bruises or both. 

His breath shudders out of him at the miracle of it, that although Matthew is injured, he will live and because of him so too will the older man. Perhaps even together, not as it had been before but near enough and the thought is enough to crack Will’s smile too wide for his jaw. 

‘’Now that we’re not in an interview room on rationed time I want to say sorry to you again, for lying and-’’ 

‘’You didn’t lie Matt,’’ Will’s smile fades small again but no less warm as he looks into black eyes that dance with flame. 

‘’I know who you are, I've always known because you never lied to me about it,’ he swallows, throat thick with emotion. 

Matthew looks strange with both regret and the far away glint of admiration waring across his pointed features, a man both ecstatic and tormented as he holds Will’s face in his hands. 

‘’I didn’t tell you about it either,’’ the younger man confesses, voice small and brittle. 

And he leans to him in increments as if magnetized to where his thumb nail thick with blood traces the lips that draw him so. 

‘’I very deliberately avoided asking you,’’ Will mumbles against Matthew’s touch, eye’s hooded to follow the sight of lips moving closer to his own. 

Before they can press them together again there is a slight hiss of metal as the door Will had come through earlier, having opened in silence now slips closed behind someone.


	21. Chapter 21

Hannibal had made his way through hallways that grew steadily thicker with smoke, the shadow of inmates clawing at their cages for freedom twisting in a desperate dance against the darkness, until he passed the hospital directors office. 

Feeling indulgent he runs his hands over blood stained, prison issued wool to smooth out any lines, though it is too dark to be seen before stepping through the door that gives with the eeriest of creeks. 

He can make out the faint outline of a desk and the barest shudder for breath from underneath it and politely closes the door behind him. 

Each step Hannibal takes into the room is measured out like well-timed heart beats as his eyes cast about in the darkness, a flicker of interest that dies into the faintest glint of amusement. 

He strolls around to the padded chair tucked neatly in place at the desk, dragging it out as if to sit on it before bowing low with a head tilted to take in the outline of a body at his feet. 

‘’Hello Doctor Frazer,’’ 

And at the sound of his voice the good doctor’s face drains of blood, as white as the moon in the midnight of the sky. 

‘’Doctor Lecter-I, if you might listen to me for a minute-I-.’’ 

The younger man stammers and trips over words no longer afforded with the confidence to pull them off and if Hannibal were a man designed as such, he would feel sympathy at the other doctor's realization, that bars between the man and the monster do tend to inflict one’s self with a bravery that is purely synthetic. 

At the pause the other man takes from beneath his desk, attempting to gulp down air around the fear in his throat Hannibal shifts to rest a palm along the top of the wood, a picture of patience. 

‘’Go on,’’ he implores, forever gracious with his own sense of propriety. 

‘’I can see to it your privileges are restored, all of them, Hannibal, if you just-if you...’’ 

‘’Yes,’’ Hannibal encourages, hand that isn’t braced on the desk now rising to run fingers along the heavy brick of a cordless phone. 

‘'Don’t hurt me,’’ the doctor whispers, soft as any plea for mercy from the monster before him. 

Hannibal’s head cocks further at the sound as he picks up the heavy plastic of the phone to weigh in his hands and seemingly satisfied by it, he replies, 

‘'I am in need of a suit.’’ 

In the darkness on the floor the director seems frozen in equal parts confusion and dread before the desperate need for his own survival has him vomiting words that are more breathless stammers than sense. 

‘'There is a suit-in-in my car-it's a-uh-a Nissan. The keys-they're in the draw-on the left. You can-you can take them-and leave.’’ 

The doctor dangles his freedom in front of him in hopes that Hannibal is hungry enough for it to overlook him, and so the older man nods as if he appreciates the information though he does not reach into the draw. 

‘’Alas, I find the one that you are currently wearing quite charming,’’ Hannibal’s voice, the soft slide of silk around steel comes from the dark around them and though Doctor Frazer is as good as blind to him he nods erratically. 

Hannibal watches the sharp shadow of an elbow striking against the roof of the desk, dark head grazing where his arm had struck as the director attempts to shimmy out of his suit without moving out from his make shift shelter. 

His legs sprawl awkward at Hannibal’s feet as he wrestles with the fabric, pulling himself free from his auburn jacket and the crisp oxblood of the shirt beneath. He lifts a shaking hand into the air, offering the clothing into the blackness and when they are taken so too is his breath. 

With one last flair of intelligent instinct, after he has handed his trousers over the younger man pushes at his shoes until they hiss across the floor and bump into Hannibal nude feet. 

‘'I’m a size 12,’’ the information sounds punched from him and the doctor merely hums his displeasure. 

‘’Shame,’’ is all he says in return and it does nothing for the director's nerves when the sound appears no further from him than before. 

There is the calming murmur of material sliding over skin as the older man dresses before the leather chair creaks in protest once more. 

‘’I can get you Will Graham,’’ Doctor Frazer swallows thickly around the profiler's name, his shamelessness at offering the life of another for the continuation of his own. 

He hears the slight intake of breath from the chair in front of him and allows himself to hope, beneath the wood he had sat at before with the humble grace of a king, now in nothing but tacky skin and old Kalvin Clines. 

‘’No, that’s won’t be necessary Doctor Frazer,’’ Hannibal replies from somewhere above him. 

‘’Why?’’ The director whines, eyes welling now because he is not a stupid man and he knows what happens to the victims who have nothing left to offer. 

‘’Because I intend to handle that little problem myself,’’ Hannibal says, not unkindly before he takes the phone in his hand and cracks it against the kneeling man's skull. 

It buckles him but he does not stop. 

It drenches the suit like a ruptured ink cartridge but he does not stop. 

Finally, he can feel his freedom bursting like the broken sack of the doctor's brain and he does not stop. 

Only when the plastic crumbles to pieces in his palm like the man beneath him, does he lean back on bare feet, unfolding into his full height and padding out of the room just as softly as he had entered it. 

He only realizes he has forgotten to retrieve the other man's car keys from the desk once he is another level higher within the hospital and it is enough incentive to push the name of Will Graham and thus all thoughts of him deeper into his mind, where it will no longer distract him from the task at hand. 

As if to dispute this, the voice of the man filters through the steel door in front of Hannibal instead and he finds himself pulled towards it, into the mouth of the prison chapel where Will stands backlit among a small sea of candles. 

The moment that Hannibal has happened upon appears almost sacred, Will with his chaos of curls and the fine lines of his body in its uniform, now held more gently than would be believed by the younger man looking down on him, as if entranced. It is a pocket of silence in which they stand around the flames that consumes all those that scream within it. 

When the door clicks shut behind Hannibal both men's eye’s snap to his own across the chapel and the atmosphere breaks like a yoke around them. 

‘’Will,’’ and even to Hannibal’s own ears he sounds reverent, stepping forward towards the two of them bathed in candle light. 

Will’s mouth parts only slightly in realization as Matthew’s hands fall from his shoulders. 

‘’This fucking guy,’' the younger man mutters, mood darkening. 

As Hannibal approaches, utterly dream like in his stolen suit stained thick with the previous owner's blood, Matthew steps in front of Will as if to both shield and threaten. Though he looks ravaged by the destruction he had rained down on the hospital his eyes glow brighter with the promise of violence. 

Will remains silent behind him, eyes flickering over Hannibal before jumping back to Matthew and he wants to reach out and run all at once. 

Hannibal stops, swallows thickly before a small smile tugs at the corner of his eyes. 

‘’You look well.’’ 

‘’No thanks to you,’’ Matthew snaps, though he too stops where he stands. 

Smoke is making its way far steadier now through the steel doors that hold them safely within the chapel and the heat has all three men frowning around stray trickles of sweat across their faces. 

But Will looks as if he is somewhere else, perhaps back in the catacomb where they had whispered to each other of forgiveness from behind the darkness. 

Maybe he is still standing in the last place he had once thought of as home, cold stone walls of a cottage along the coast as Matthew rubs at his skin where paint dries in varies shades of sunset. 

‘’What do you want Hannibal?’’ he whispers. 

The lack of anger or hurt or anything in Will’s voice has Hannibal licking to wet his lips, tongue thick from a mouth that suddenly feels too dry. 

‘'I wanted to see you,’’ Is all he says, as if it is as simple as that. 

Matthew’s frown deepens at the exchange even though no one looks at him now, as if he is forgotten though he stands like a wall between them. 

‘’Is that why you got him locked up?’’ He attempts to pull the attention back to him, fists curling like the smoke at their feet. 

‘’He had a chance to escape,’’ Hannibal replies, eye’s briefly on Matthew before the weight of them lands back on the profiler. 

‘’He chose to stay to try and free you, in that sense you are the only reason why Will was apprehended.’’ the doctor continues. 

Matthew spits in the space between them, globs of his own blood colouring the saliva. 

Hannibal raises an eye brow at the action before turning back to Will. 

‘'This is the life you’ve chose?’’ He asks, manages to sound disappointed by it all. 

Will’s eye’s shimmer with the emotion he had refused to let seep into his words, like poison from his mouth, the colours there a kaleidoscope as he stares Hannibal down in silence. 

‘’See, any normal guy would take this as a hint and leave but not you, huh Doc’’ Matthew drawls, anger slightly abated at the way Will ignores him, hovering behind him like a shadow at Matthew’s back. 

‘’You once said you were curious if either of us could survive separation’’ Hannibal say’s as if Matthew had not spoken, eye’s seeking past him to the profiler. 

‘'Do you remember?’’ 

It is almost a hushed whisper across the room to the other man, a smile within the doctor's eye’s that pulls the barest hint of a nod from Will, whose pupils now glitter with a softens that contradicts the set to his jaw. 

‘’And here we stand,’ Hannibal spans out his hands on either side of him, a flex of fingers,’ you made it this far without me and I without you.’’ 

Matthew wants to turn back to assess the look on Will’s face but he cannot bring himself to shy away from the monster before them that now seems to tempt both with his vulnerability, like a wolf baring its throat. 

‘’I can live without you if I must Will, and you without me but I find that I do not want to,’’ Hannibal takes one step closer still as Will mirrors the movement, ‘it no longer feels like a life without you in it.’’ 

And at these words Matthew truly hates both himself and the Chesapeake ripper because he understands the sentiment all too well. It is why he tore through steel and people and death itself just to return to Will, if only one last time. 

He reels against the thought, does not want to sympathies with the man who would take this from him, no better than the hospital staff or the FBI. 

‘’Is that how you treat the meaning for your very existence then/ By betraying him, trying to kill him, hurting him over and over and when you can’t get to him personally you aim true for the ones around him. Is that how you love Doctor Lecter/’’ Matthew had started his rant as a low hiss between gritted teeth before the words had torn from him on a scream across the chapel, loud enough to turn the two men towards him. 

Matthew can feel Will looking at him, like the sun on his back and he knows he himself could not survive the separation. That he just isn’t as strong as Will, never was and never will be and it does little else if not make him love the man more. 

‘’Have you not thought about killing the one you love?’’ Hannibal asks just as quietly. 

‘’Of course,’’ Mathew grits,’’ why do you think I killed someone else.’’ 

‘’And is that not a betrayal of Will?’’ 

The orderly tenses but does not back down, taking another step closer to the doctor so that they stand no more than two rows of benches away. 

‘'Yes.’’ 

‘’And did you not lie to him about this betrayal, sent him to chase after the ghost of a killer when you slept beside him the whole time and called him mine?’’ Lecter let’s his voice rise only slightly with the fever of his passion, his unfailing ability to find himself righteous. 

‘'And do you not wish to kill me so that you may keep Will to yourself, with no one but you to see him through days long as winter and nights dark as death?’' 

Mathew’s throat clicks as he swallows the bile there, already all too aware of the doctors point that he proves as elegantly as everything else and his voice is a wisp of sound, broken. 

‘’Yes.’’ 

Only then does Hannibal relax back into the slow breaths that pull from his chest as he tries to catch the scent on the air, satisfied once again to inhale the distance that stretches between himself and the profiler. 

‘'Then you are no better than me.’’ 

The doctor turns his eyes back to Will, smile faint and as apologetic for his distraction as it is endeared. 

‘’It seems you have a type,’’ he tells him. 

The lax in Matthews shoulders, a sag of momentary defeat finds the muscles bunching again at his words. 

‘’Don’t talk to him,’’ the orderly hisses. 

‘’I will address Will as much as I see fit,’’ Hannibal replies coolly, eyes like soil soaked in blood that hold the younger man within their utter indifference to him. 

‘'Enough,’’ Will barks, finally having found his voice. 

The wail of fire engines swallowing the distance behind the stone walls of the hospital draws nearer. 

Hannibal turns to the sound, something settling to stillness inside of him as he sighs into the smoke around them. 

‘’Yes, I suppose it is,’ he says, reaching into the inside pocket of the director's jacket to pull out the bulk of the tranquilizer gun. 

‘’What are you doing?’’ Will stumbles forward, voice fragile within its panic as Hannibal levels the gun at Matthew. 

‘’Returning a favour,’' Hannibal responds and the dart is noiseless as he presses the trigger and releases it into the thick skin of Matthew’s chest. 

It hits above the orderly's heart and sends him back a step before Will is pressed against his shoulder blades, hands up to curl into his shoulders. 

The profiler feels the man in his arms growl low enough to appear as more vibration than sound as he sagged in his hold, knee’s already trembling like the black lashes that fringe his eyes. 

Matthew buckles graceless to the floor and Will scrambles to spread himself over the younger man's chest, desperate fingers dancing around the dart before giving into the temptation to rip it out and sling it. 

Will clutches at Matthew’s face, black eyes all too quickly fighting to remain focused as they settle on the brassy blue of the others. He pulls at the hands around him as he pushes past the waning effort to stay awake. 

‘'You have to run this time,’’ Matthew croaks, gaze flashing in fury, fear then resignation before his eyelids drop shut. 

It is like feeling the life leak out of him and it ignites a rage Will had almost considered forgotten. He swings his body round, knee’s scrapping painfully on smoke covered stone as his eyes burn and his throat works to choke past words. 

It blinds him for a moment before he feels the sharp, familiar bite of a needle in his own leg and the anger dies on his lips like a question. 

Will heaves around the air too thick to breath from on the floor, energy seeping from him like blood from a wound as his body becomes too heavy to navigate. 

Hannibal is carried forward on silent feet, to watch Will’s last moments of awareness as he pulls the FBI jacket from around Matthew’s shoulders to hold over the orderlies face like a smoke mask. 

He finds himself unconscious not much later, lips pressed to the pulse point of Mathew’s throat as if he too could burrow away to safety within the man's skin. 

Hannibal drops to a crouch at the two men's bodies, almost lifelessly draped across the other, tranquilizer gun dropped to the floor and forgotten. 

He sighs heavily as he runs the back of his knuckles along the fine groove of Will cheek bone, considering his options. 

The doctor's resignation does not show on his face, only his admiration at the way Will twitches beneath his touch as if still he tries to fight against it. 

When he rises and strides on long elegant legs from the prison chapel it is with the quicker speed of intent. Some of the inmates that watch him pass them from their cells, seemingly oblivious to air almost too thick to breath and the haunting calls to be rescued, might even describe his movements as purposeful. Those who would survive to talk about it, perhaps. 

Hannibal pulls the dress shirt he wears up over his nose and mouth, unhindered by the smoke that stings his eyes to tears as he makes a sharp turn before the next level of the hospital and bursts through the doors of the infirmary. 

The room is yet undamaged by the fires that now battles wildly against the south side of the building. Old heart monitors, locked cabinets full of antibiotics, insulin and opiates and basic medical supplies are scattered about the room, desolate looking within their order. 

Hannibal marches to a gurney with its blue rubber bottom lining the cold steel of its body and with well-practiced movements he lifts the bars on either side of it before dumping various medical supplies in its middle. 

As he wheels it to the exit, an assortment of memories reeling behind his eyes from years of hospital residency, the doctor snatches at a bundle of shock blankets on a shelf along the wall. These too are tossed onto the gurney before he makes his way back out into the hall, the low whine of rubber wheels along stone announcing his approach. 

The walk back to the chapel, almost leisurely now, is like a stroll through the border between hell and purgatory, as if in a curious state of both. 

The men who have not yet passed out from smoke inhalation still clutch at the air through the bars, fingers almost brushing the metal of the gurney. Some choke and splutter their way into a silent slump on the floor but the doctor passes them as if they are already ghosts, unseen. 

Some cry. 

The wracking sobs and wails of children, like the call of the fire truck sirens that now appear to be close enough behind stones and bars to consider the hope of rescue. 

Hannibal quickens his pace when he comes to the juncture in the hall only to look down one corridor and find it completely consumed by flame. 

He ignores the relief that floods his lungs like fresh air once back in the chapel, the smoke still not as dense in there around the men that lay exactly as he left them. 

The distant cry of an ambulance breaks through the moment, spurs the doctor into action as he abandons the gurney and bends to scoop his hands beneath Will’s back. 

When he lifts the younger man, pulling him to Hannibal's chest his head sags slack against his neck, Will’s hand falling away from where it had snared in Matthew’s clothing like a spider curled in on itself in death. 

The doctor no longer has time to consider the weight of his world now boneless within his arms but he does remember Muskrat farm and how the moments seemed parallel. 

He slides Will’s body onto the gurney, legs first to free his hand so that he may move aside the medical supplies to where Will’s feet lay limp and bare. 

The doctor unravels the profiler's body with professional care until he gets to his delicate head, untamed with curls and then his hands betray him. He takes the younger man’s skull in his hands, thumbs gentle beneath the curve of his eye sockets and eases Will back as if laying him to rest. 

Hannibal’s eye’s catch on Will’s closed lids only once, lashes casting spider leg shadows over his cheeks before a sound from the body still on the floor pulls at his attention. 

‘’Always interrupting, aren’t you Mr. Brown,’’ he replies to the sprawling heap of muscle and youth across the floor, watches it twitch in search for the weight that had once rested on top of him. 

It is quick work from there and Hannibal resists the urge to look down at Will’s still and sleeping face, upside down below him as he pushes the gurney through what remains of the hospital. 

Though it is more of a struggle to breath and see, though most of the men have stopped their moaning around them and all seems quite apart from the arrival of emergency services, Hannibal continues with a certainty that suggests he will not be stopped. 

Not again. 

He steers the bed on its rickety wheels up into the final level where the fire has not reached yet, just as the double doors to the entrance swing open to give way to a stream of firefighters suited in yellow uniforms and gas masks. 

Hannibal does not slow or stop and neither do they, rushing past him like a flank of fish swarming around a rock on the river bed. 

He can see the silver slice of daylight breaking through the glass of the doors and Will’s body rocks softly beneath the foil sheen of the shock blanket as they emerge on the other side of the hospital, out into the harsh brightness and biting air of their freedom. 

Everything is a blur to Hannibal for a moment, the stone steps before him that merge like a desert mirage, the blue and red flashes of ambulance lights in the car park bellow, the vivid red of fire trucks that scatter between black expanses of tar mark. 

His ears ring with the low drone of approaching police cars and his hands slide with sweat against the bars of the gurney as he lowers Will down the steps that seem endless. 

Behind him the entrance doors clatter back open as one by one the bodies of inmates are dragged out like heavy sacks of sand to spread along the floor. 

There is a desperate flurry of movement as first responders in their uniforms of white and blue chase up the steps past Hannibal to see to the injured. 

Commands are being shouted, the dull thud of a chest being compressed by capable hands trying to beat a heart back to life fill the air and Hannibal is helped by a young ambulance attendee down the last two steps in front of him. 

Her eye’s run over Will’s still body, assessing before they jump to Hannibal's. 

‘’I’m one of the doctors that was working in the infirmary when the fire started,’ the cannibal explains, voice brazen with smoke and so believable that she does not question him. Notices his suit stained in blood but not the naked slap of his feet against the ground. 

She takes the end of the gurney and pulls them urgently to the back of a waiting ambulance. 

In the distance birds twitter from bare branches and Hannibal forces himself to suppress a smile. 

‘’He collapsed from smoke inhalation, I'm quite certain,’’ Hannibal rasps, watches as the paramedic ducks into the ambulance and begins to clatter free the oxygen machine near the back. 

He could take the ambulance, he supposes but thinks better of it, aware of the GPS tracking system now and how they would get no further than the next state if they were to steal it. 

But he had scooped the keys from the floor that had fallen from the FBI jacket wrapped around Matthew face. He takes the set out now while the woman is distracted, to raise the fob into the air and click its button, looking and listening intently across the car park. 

Hannibal watches as a small black car comes to life with an electronic beep and the glint of alarm system lights, just a row down from them. 

It will do, he thinks. 

And it is purely perfunctory when the doctor steps up into the back of the ambulance with the first responder, head bowed at the small smile she gives him when Hannibal reaches to help untangle the cords attached to the oxygen mask only to jerk them tight around her neck. 

The movement is lightning quick, so much so she does not realize Hannibal is killing her until the wires have already cut into her neck, breath stuttering out of her in frantic timing to the flail of her arms. 

He looks out of the back of the ambulance as she buckles beneath his strength, sees the fires rise high into the sky, eclipsing half the hospital already in black and greys and reds. 

The morning air smells of ash, the distant fragrance of singed skin now burning to bone and the plum perfume of the women that drops like a stone at his feet. 

Hannibal looks to Will, still oblivious to it all as he climbs from the ambulance and proceeds to wheel him down through the rows of parked cars to the agent's vehicle that sits in wait. 

It takes less than a minute to pull Will from the gurney and position him along the back of the seats, body sticking to brown leather and the smell of smoke in sharp contrast to the scent of the pine air freshener. 

Just as quickly Hannibal loads the rest of the medical supplies and all other extra cargo into the boot of the jeep and slips round the front, into the driving seat to peel away from what remains of the place that had tried to cage and kill them. 

His chest rattles with every breath, much the same as Will who rasps in the back seat and so, with the windows down and the peaceful melody of a sonata from the classical radio station Hannibal swallows the miles to freedom as surely as he had consumed all those that had tried to take it from him.


	22. Chapter 22

Matthew’s POV 

I try to convince myself that it was enough to cherish you while i had you, as I drift between the molecules of darkness, unable to move or breathe or speak. 

But if I could move, know it would be towards you, wherever that may be. 

If I could breathe, know it would be for you, to take you into my lungs instead, to keep. 

And if I could speak then you must know that this too would be for you, to tell you that I've never loved another in the ways in which I love you. 

I try to convince myself I was enough but I how can I do that when the only time I've felt this to be true, is when I'm with you. 

And you’re not here now, though I selfishly wish you were. Wherever here is...... 

Will wakes himself, breath barking from his throat as his chest wheezes and constricts as if his whole body is clenched between a fist. 

Details filter through his mind sluggishly, the soft keys of a piano and the low hum of a road beneath it, all senseless until the voice from somewhere in front of him colours it all in meaning. 

‘’Hold on Will.’’ 

And he can do little more than groan at Hannibal, the light of the day too bright to do more than squint against as he feels the movement around him slow to a stop. 

His throat burns and his eyes feel as swollen as his tongue as he rocks like a turtle on its back. 

The sound of a door clicking open and the angry bullet fire breath of cars shooting past. 

There is the same sound only louder now behind his head, accompanied with a stream of cool air that feels as if it freezes the sweat on his skin, sending Will into shivers. 

He grunts at the feel of plastic against his lips, surgeons' fingers at his jaw and Will can do little more than groan in relief as water spills over his tongue. 

It feels like the off cast of a mountain stream, almost sweet in its coolness and he suckles as if his thirst had manifested to hunger. 

The first few sips are enough to revive Will who then takes the bottle from where Hannibal holds it for him, to gulp it down greedily with his own hands. 

He only manages to lift his head, slight and weak so as not to choke before he is chastised for drinking too fast. 

But Will doesn’t stop until the plastic crunches around its emptiness and he lets it fall to the floor. 

Only then does Will manage to hold his eyes open long enough to take in his surroundings. 

Felt covered car roof, high shine leather seats and from out the tinted windows a leeway where they rest beside the busy comings and goings of a highway. 

The flood of clean oxygen is enough to make the profiler pitch to his side with dizziness, almost falling into the footwell before Hannibal catches at his shoulders to still him. 

It is something about this touch that brings the thought of Mathew sparking to life inside of his mind, the whisper of an echo that rises to a roar. 

‘’Where -is-he?’’ Will pants, voice breaking and uneven. Whether in fear or near suffocation neither man can tell. 

‘’You should rest Will,’' is all Hannibal says and like always his tone betrays nothing. 

The doctor leaves him then, closing the door and slipping back behind the wheel to pull of back into the fast lane. 

Will groans again, brittle and agonized because he wants to fight. He really does but he is too weak to even think. 

Before he can do much more than imagine a body once lithe and flawless as it is consumed by smoke and flame in the belly of a chapel, Will falls back into an empty sleep. 

His eyes are pried open by the obtrusive heat against his face, unsure if he made it out of the fire after all. But Will can hear the bleat of gulls in the sky, the soothing hiss of waves that lap a shore close enough to scent its brine. 

He doesn’t make a sound, pretends as if he still sleeps as the truck rolls to a stop and the drone of classical music is cut short along with the engine. 

Will’s POV 

I lay across the back seats of the stolen car and I wait. 

Like I had waited for you to fall into sleep before wandering the nearest beach in search of Hannibal. Though now he is here I don’t know what else to do because you are not. I only know that nothing will satisfy me more than beating the breath out of him until I am exhausted. 

The moment comes once he gets out of the car, gravel crunching beneath feet on his way to my side to open the door. 

I wonder what you would have looked like beneath the summer sun that streams past the faint trace of clouds in a sky so blue it looks endless. 

I hear Hannibal take in a breath of his hard-earned freedom, his back to me as he absorbs the seaside view and I crawl soundless from out where I lay. 

My feet hit the ground and before he can turn i launch at him, arms weak and needy for the feel of you that find his neck instead. 

He too is soundless as I clamp down against his wind pipe with all my strength, forearm against his throat and my chest to his back. 

His hair is a feather against my cheek, run through with silver as I duck my face to his shoulder so that he can’t drive his skull back into me, can’t shake me off. 

Hannibal's hands jump to my grip on him, fingers biting into my skin on instinct and for a minute it is more like holding one another instead of killing. 

Until he struggles in earnest, desperate to breath as he tosses like the ocean against me. 

The sharp jab of his elbow like a well-aimed blade drives into my ribs and I lose my strength as quickly as I had found it. 

Hannibal rounds on me as I almost buckle, rising with a swing of my fist that clatters against his jaw and it is enough force to send us both to the ground. 

I don’t care for the sudden freedom. For the return of my place back into a world beyond bars. I care for nothing at all as I pull my way up the length of Hannibal’s body until I sit across the dome of his chest. 

The suit and its bloody state enrage me once more, energy crackling beneath the bruise of my knuckles that bounce of the bones of the doctors face enough times to split skin. 

I had imagined beating him to death this way before once and for a moment I wonder if he is proud that I have kept my promise after all this time. 

With my hands. 

But when I take a pause, to catch my breath and stare down at him I see no satisfaction in his eyes, a honeyed brown alight from the inside out in the sun. 

Instead, I see a bone deep exhaustion in the fine and bleeding bone of his brow, the aristocratic curve of his lips that flood with blood and no longer mock me with the barest hint of a smile. 

I see the fight leave him in the way it had left me when I woke up without you. 

Snatching at his collar now crusted and brown to bring his face closer to my own I hiss at him. 

‘’Why?’’ 

Hannibal swallows around the bruise of his throat and squints up at me, boneless beneath my body though his voice sounds as unaffected as it usually does. Not even out of breath. 

‘'Why what Will?’’ 

‘’Why did you leave Matthew behind?’’ I mean to sound as furious as I am and not just defeated. I fail at this in much the same way I failed you. 

Finally, I see the amusement and I rise a balled fist to strike Hannibal again before his hand comes up to still me. 

‘’What makes you think I left him?’’ He asks, always so curious that while my anger rises still, I miss the implication of the words. 

Until I don’t and I fall into a stillness that I do not dare to break with a breath. 

I look into his eyes, truly and deeply as when I would try to understand him, when I would try to know him. I beg him with the weight of my own gaze while searching for the answer I long for. 

Don’t play with me. 

Not about him. 

Not about this. 

Don’t do this to me. 

Not again. 

Until I find what I am looking for in the offset flicker of his eye’s that slide to the truck for an instant that, had I blinked I would have missed. 

My own eyes follow the same direction, confused but hopeful. So much so that I ache with it. To the empty back seats and the vacant front ones and I don’t understand, turn to tell Hannibal as much before a dull thud against metal snaps my head back to the truck. 

I hear it again, a heartbeat later and I am rising from the doctor beneath me as if summoned by the sound. 

It draws me nearer, creeping closer until I stand before the boot with blood trickling from the split in my knuckles, falling to the floor, soft as rain. 

Will reaches forward, fingers trembling against the latch on the trunk until it pops free, the door rising on its hydraulics. 

There is no time to avoid the blur of black and grey that lunges at him with cat like speed. 

Will is knocked to the ground, breathless and a disbelieving laugh is punched out of him as his head connects with gravel. He knows the body on top of his own, recognizes the weight and length of him before he even opens his eyes. 

When Will does it is in time to watch the night of Matthew’s eyes burn bright from the merciless chill of his own anger, to a realization that leaves him looking almost childlike. 

He is beautiful and alive, though smoke stained and caked in sweat and dust and Will feels awed at the sight of him. 

‘’Will,’’ His name tumbles from Mathews lips like a hail Mary as he narrows his eyes against the brightness of the sky above them. 

The younger man doesn’t seem to notice the scenery either, his own freedom lost on him as he stares into Will’s face, as if it is the world and everything in it that keeps it turning. 

Hands both slender and grubby reach to bracket the profilers face and only when Matthew can touch him does he believe the sight of Will sprawled out beneath him like an offering. 

Will tangles his own fingers around the younger man, content to stare up at him as he blocks out the sun. His smile is a beacon, enough to almost feel blinding, Matthew’s laughter both breathless and broken before he ducks down to clash their lips together. 

He grips the curls at the back of Will’s neck to pull him closer still and presses into the curved smile of his mouth as if to devour him. 

Matthew pulls back only long enough to whisper into the skin of Will’s cheek, pulling the scent of him in through his nose after each word. 

‘’sweet face.’’ 

It is said with more emotion than Will thought him capable of. 

‘’What are you doing?’’ the older man replies sweetly, soft as the kiss he presses to Matthew’s throat. 

The younger man draws away again after nudging their noses together, like the whisper of passing ships. 

‘’Something I never thought I'd be doing again,’ he rasps, almost fearful at the thought. 

‘’I’m looking at you.’’ 

And it is the most peaceful of sounds Will has ever heard a killer make. 

‘’As much as I find all of this rather touching, I must insist we get on board the ferry now,’’ Hannibal announces from behind them. 

It is enough to latch Matthew’s attention to his presence as his eyes narrow and he draws away from Will like mist rolling from its mountain. 

‘’You locked me in the trunk like some kind of fucking dog,’’ Matthew fumes, absentmindedly reaching for Will to pull him into standing as well. 

Hannibal’s eye’s pitch between them, where their hands bunch like flowers grown into knots around the other. 

‘’i wouldn’t do that to a dog,’’ he remarks, matter of fact. His eyes’ narrow in a smile at Will as the profiler regards him anew, as if only now just seeing him. 

There is no small amount of wonder there beneath the profiler's paranoia and it makes Hannibal's mouth curl at its corners. Mirth and a fondness that threatens to never cease. 

‘’Shall we?’’ Hannibal gestures to the distance and only then do the other two men notice the cruise boat waiting in the dock. 

Matthew turns to study Will as the older man does the same, a silent agreement passing between them. 

It could be the only way to stay together. 

‘’What If I don’t feel like going on a fucking cruise with you cannibal, no offense but I can think of better ways to spend a vacation than eating the cabin crew,’’ Matthew drawls, all bravado and swagger once more, now that he and Will stand a chance at a future. 

Together. 

Matthew would never admit it to Hannibal but he would do so much more than eat a ship full of people just to stay by the profiler's side. But the man was dangerous and just as likely to separate them as the law enforcement that would no doubt hunt them for the rest of their days. 

Hannibal eyes him as one might a disgruntled child, irritable with sun exposure before he looks to Will and the hardness there melts like syrup from a spoon. 

‘’It is your only means of a thorough escape, though I can’t make you I do hope that you take the option. If not for your own sake,’ Hannibal lets the pause linger, dramatic as always,’ then for Will.’’ 

Matthew’s complaints die in his chest as he turns back to the profiler, takes in the tired slope of his shoulders beneath prison clothing that rubs raw against his skin. When Will turns to look right back at him it seems like an answer in itself. 

Wherever you go. 

Let me go too. 

The orderly tugs at Will’s hand, closed around his own until it is brought to his lips and he kisses against the torn skin there, pressing the unspoken promise into his blood. 

When Matthew turns back to Hannibal his mouth is red with it and the older man tongues at his own bottom lip as if in sympathy. 

‘’We’ll need normal clothing,’’ Will says, surveying the harbour side in search for a shop. 

‘’And shoes,’’ Matthew adds. 

‘’Possibly even each other,’’ Hannibal implores, far too amused by the way the other two men scoff at him but follows his lead none the less. 

It I something Will did not ever consider happening in this life, or any other for that matter. The three of them casting long shadows across a beach wall as they stroll down the summer side walk. As if they did not want to kill each other. As if they didn’t even know how.


End file.
